


Fall Into Place

by TulipaNegra



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Post-Episode AU: s04e13 Journey's End
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-07 17:08:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 47,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7722820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TulipaNegra/pseuds/TulipaNegra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor travels alone after wiping Donna's mind, set on forgetting the Most Important Woman in the whole, wide Universe. But the Universe has other plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> What happened in 'Journey's End' is simply wrong. So this is an attempt to rectify it, by giving the Doctor and Donna the ending they deserved.
> 
> This is a completed fic, so I will be posting chapters daily while I'm still on vacation.
> 
> Disclaimer: If I owned any of these characters, things would be very different, believe you me.
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

He stands still, hands in the pockets of his suit, his feet digging deep in the sand. He can feel Donna’s worried eyes on him. His face is hard, he knows it. Having seen his memories, she must think that this, depositing his ageing clone with Rose, must be his own, personal hell. She is wrong. His own, personal hell awaits him just as soon as the doors of the TARDIS close behind Donna and himself. Not long now. It’s getting nearer. He prays to whatever god has created this unjust universe that he will have time, time to save her before the damage is fatal. He just wishes that Handy and Rose will _get on with it already_. Time is running out.

Oh, he knows what Handy just whispered in Rose’s ear. He can feel Donna’s eyes burning holes at the back of his head. Always worrying for him. He knows that he couldn’t say what Handy just said to Rose. Not anymore. The indifference he feels as they kiss is staggering. He turns. Donna follows. He doesn’t look back. He doesn’t care anymore. His own world is about to turn upside down. He’s allowed to be selfish just this once, surely.

The doors close. Donna fiddles with the knobs and levers, and sets them in the Vortex. She’s going on about Fellspoon, the planet with the shifting-in-the-breeze mountains. Then on she rattles about how to fix the Chameleon Circuit. And it starts. As she stammers the words, he can feel his hearts drop to his stomach. No. There must be another way. This cannot be the end of Donna Noble.

“Look at me. Donna, look at me!”, he says, as she claims to be fine.

They both know there is no other way. If it kills Donna Noble once to realise it, it kills the Doctor ten times over.

“I was gonna be with you. Forever.”

How many times can a man die? How come he’s still alive? After all the pain, the grief, the loss… Even with all he’s survived, he’s certain he won’t survive this.

“I know.”

“Rest of my life. Travelling. In the TARDIS. The DoctorDonna. Oh, oh God! I can't go back. Don't make me go back. Doctor, please! Please don't make me go back!”

He tells her he’s so, so sorry. It doesn’t even begin to cover it. He tells her they had the best of times. It’s an understatement. Not just the good. The bad, too. He knows that no other person he’s travelled with, through all the nine hundred long years of his life, would’ve pressed that lever that blew up Pompeii, and its twenty thousand inhabitants. And he can never thank her enough. She took the hard decisions with him. Shared the burden, the torment, the regret. Without ever losing her kindness. Without ever accepting that it would always come to the worst. No words were ever needed. She _understood_. If Rose made him better, Donna made him best.

The sheer terror in her voice does not stop him. It doesn’t even make him pause to think about what he’s about to do. He places his fingers on her temples. He basks in the few moments he’s got with her as Donna Noble, his companion, his best mate, his brilliant Donna, before he reduces her back to Donna Noble, the gossipy temp from Chiswick.

He closes his eyes. It isn’t necessary. But he cannot stand to watch as it all goes away from her. It is enough that he will feel it. And he does. It takes no more than a second. An electric surge passes from his fingers to her temples, and back. And he’s gone from her mind. Not a single trace remains of him, or all that they did together. Of all her best. Of all his best. The best of Donna Noble-and himself-is gone.

She collapses against him. He presses her into his chest. He will never be able to do so again. He rests his cheek against the crown of her head. He feels something bubbling in his chest, something that savours strongly of despair, sorrow, _anger_. He gives himself a moment. But no more. He knows that this is not the time to have a breakdown, however tempting it might be. Time is of essence. Unwillingly, he lays her on the floor. Oh, he could’ve kept her in his arms forever. He would’ve shed tears. He can’t.

He puts the coordinates for Donna’s home in a daze. Before he realises it, he’s knocking frantically on the front door. She’s once again in his arms. He’s got till he gets her to her bed. Then it’s over. Something that hardly got the chance to begin, he realises too late.

“Help me!”, he cries once the door swings open. He’s not sure whom he’s calling to. The universe?

Wilfred helps him. It’s not nearly enough. He has no other choice. It’ll have to do.

Of course they demand explanations. Why did he appear at their doorstep with Donna unconscious? He tells them. He owes them-her-that much. It isn’t easy. He hopes it’ll calm him down at least. Dull the pain. It does no such thing.

“For one moment, one _shining_ moment, she was the most important woman in the whole, wide universe.” And she always will be, he adds in his head. Because she will be, to him. The woman who made him best.

When she walks in, and scarcely throws a glance his way, he has to swallow the unbelievable pain. He only fully realises the extent of his actions when he says goodbye, and she barely looks up.

Maybe he should have let her burn up.

No.

He’s more willing to inhabit a universe with a Donna Noble who doesn't know who he is, than a universe without Donna Noble. He shudders with the very thought.

Just for today, he’ll be selfish. Just this once.

As soon as he steps into the TARDIS, his loss comes crashing down on him. There are no tears, no sobs, no violent displays of anger or sorrow. His desolation is too great for that. He sets the TARDIS in the Vortex. He takes off his soaked jacket. He leans over the console. He feels the pain surging through him. If he survives this, then he can survive anything.

Unable to stand anymore, he lies on the console room floor. The whooshing of the TARDIS as it takes off soothes him. He is asleep within moments.


	2. Chapter 2

He allows himself one day. One day of wallowing in sadness. One day of depression. One day of grieving.

It is a hard day. If he has any hope of ever feeling well again, then there are things to be done. First, he sorts out Donna’s room. His hearts are beating fast. His face is cold and hard, like stone. He makes the bed, stores away the scattered clothes on the chair, tidies the messy, lived in room. He bends to straighten the photo on her nightstand-it’s of Donna and her Dad sometime in her school days-and his eyes catch a glimpse of something white in the half-open drawer. He opens the drawer fully, and picks it up. Curiosity did kill the cat, after all.

As soon as the white thing that caught his attention is in his hands, he regrets opening the bloody drawer. There is no stopping his hearts from falling into his stomach. It’s the little headdress that Donna wore on her wedding day. On the day they met. A silent reminder of where she came from, and how far she’d come.

He stuffs it back in the drawer, and closes it forcefully without another thought. He sniffles a little. He nods. He switches off the light, walks out, and closes the door with finality. His work there is done. This room will not be opened again. Finito.

But it isn’t just her room. Her things are scattered all around the TARDIS. He tries to find every last one of them. Better endure all the pain now, rather than stumble on her toothbrush in a century.

Once he finishes, he stumbles into the kitchen, and makes himself a cup of tea. As he reaches for a mug, he notices the futuristic one that Donna used to drink her coffee in. She had picked it up from Earth in the 30th century. He takes it down, disregarding the part of his brain that’s warning him that maybe drinking his tea in it is not the brightest idea he’s had all week. _Wanna bet?_ , he retorts sarcastically, and that shuts his inner realist up. After all, it’s the one day he’s allowed to be sentimental. He rubs his eyes tiredly. He’ll get rid of it tomorrow, he promises himself.

* * *

After that day, he throws himself right back in the thick of things. He visits planets, he sees new and old things, strange and familiar beings, has adventures, runs. Oh, he runs like there is no tomorrow. He feels as if there really isn’t.

There’s no way for the people he meets to see his sadness. He’s his usual, cheery self. But it seldom is true cheer. It’s more like a manic, forced cheer. It gets him by.

Some of those he meets, or runs with, or saves, he likes. Some he doesn’t. Some bring a small, genuine smile to his lips. Those are the ones that, in another time, he’d have invited to travel with him. To those who don’t require an invitation, and ask him to take them with him anyway, he answers a stern, irrevocable “No”. They nod, as if understanding, averting their hurt eyes.

Some days are good, some not so much. The good days take a few weeks to come. Those are the days when he’ll be too busy running, fixing things, _surviving_ , that he won’t have time to think about it all. The bad days are invariably the days he’s too relaxed, no running of any sort, that time passes slowly, and his thoughts invariably wander back to her. He’ll think of the rest of the gang, too. He’ll wonder how Rose and Handy are doing, if Martha got married yet, or how Jack’s getting along in Torchwood. He’ll think fondly of Sarah-Jane, and her boy, Luke. But these are dangerous paths for his mind to tread. Sooner or later, he inevitably ends up reliving the horror after the reality bomb. Donna’s face, wet with tears as she begs him to let her die rather than forget, is too real in his mind. So is their time together, brief though it was. And once he’s drowning in that sea, it’s difficult to swim and save himself.

After a couple of months of solitary travelling, he realises that a good day can turn into a very bad day in the blink of an eye. A Silurian girl he’s just saved from a rather angry pterodactyl offers him a salted rat as a thank-you treat. He declines politely, claiming the rodent is “too salty”.

“Oh, that’s too salty…”, mocks the girl, offended.

His memory is triggered faster than a Dalek ray, and he can hear her exasperated voice after he refused the salt she’d offered him for the detox. His face hardens, lines appearing around his eyes, lips curling grimly. Within the next two minutes, he’s in the TARDIS, putting in the coordinates for Agrilatoria, the universe’s biggest and busiest market. There’s bound to be some sort of trouble there. Even a mere pickpocket will do the trick right now. He pulls the lever more forcefully than he means, and the noise during take-off is twice as bad in protest.

* * *

After that, he hears her voice clearly in his head more often than he cares to admit. He ignores it for the most part. But it is still there, making sarcastic remarks, offering compassion when he needs it, and cracking jokes at things he just _knows_ she’d have found amusing. “Oi, watch it, Spaceman!”, he hears her say, loud and clear, as if she was standing right beside him, when he becomes too sassy for his own good. His lips purse. _“Stop it!”_ , he shouts to his own mind, and carries on.

The real problem is when he’s alone. There is no stopping his memory then, no forcing his attention on something else, no ignoring her. He slides to the floor, and simply gives in. He lets the memories fill him up. He never cries. He wishes he would.

Sometimes, he’s tempted to cross her timeline; pass her by on the street, stand behind her at a street light, watch her walking in the park. He never does. He tells himself it’s because of her, he doesn’t want to risk bringing down the barriers he’s put in her mind. He knows he’s lying. He can’t handle such a meeting. The regret, the guilt would choke him in an instant. So he travels on.

* * *

Five months pass since leaving her at her mother’s house before the TARDIS picks up something strange in 21st century Britain. It’s in Brighton, so he feels safe enough to investigate. He parks the TARDIS somewhere out of the way, and starts wandering about town. It doesn’t take him long to locate the trouble.

A grumpada, a little furry, bloodsucking animal-the equivalent of a dog in Alpha Centauris-has somehow landed in the backyard of a seaside hotel. The owner’s bewilderment at gazing at the orange, almost cute, little fellow that’s curled up on the Doctor’s lap as he strokes it softly that’s been giving his customers angry bites round their ankles, is clearly written οn his face. The Doctor offers to take him to a pub for a pint, make sure the poor man is okay. He can’t help but snicker a little at the man’s expression.

As he’s walking down the street, the hotel owner still in a daze by his side and the grumpada safely locked in the TARDIS, he’s happily chatting away. He requires no answer, which is just as well, as the hotel owner is in no way ready to speak just yet. So on he goes about this and that, enjoying the company after so many months of solitude in the TARDIS, feeling the sea breeze on his face. He spots a ginger mane of long hair down the busy streets. He doesn’t stop. He regulates his heart beats. He reminds himself successfully that there are a lot of ginger people in Britain, and that he can’t have a bloody heart attack every time he sees one on the street. So on he walks, hands in his pockets, the perfect picture of indifference. Until the head turns.

The ginger woman looks the street up and down, before crossing the road. There is no room for doubt now. Blue eyes, slightly hunched nose, curvy body. It’s Donna.

For a moment, his feet are planted to the pavement. He cannot move a muscle. Then she turns to scan the windows of the shops, her eyes passing over him as he stares at her. _Bugger_. The Doctor springs into action; he drags the hotel owner into a shop. He makes sure she’s out of sight before letting him go out again. After that, the hotel owner declares him to be “stark, ravin’ mad”, and storms off. The Doctor stands, mouth slightly agape, looking down the road where Donna disappeared. He runs to the TARDIS, absolutely terrified of ginger hair. He makes it there without incident. He sets the old girl in the Vortex faster than you can say “Sonic Screwdriver”.

He checks the date he just left far, far behind him. It’s barely a month in Donna’s timeline since he wiped her memory. It hurt to think of it like that, but now was not the time for being lenient on himself. He leans over the console. He never thought he’d see her again. His hearts are thumping in his chest. He manages to keep himself _put_ , and not go back to Donna. The pain is great. But the danger to Donna herself is beyond imagining.

“Do not ever again let my timeline cross with hers”, he says in quiet fury to the TARDIS.

Her only reply is to thrash more than usually in the Vortex. Sometimes, he regrets having a spaceship with a conscience of its own.


	3. Chapter 3

Slowly, it gets easier. The pain, the loneliness, the heart wrenching _guilt_ does not fade. It simply dulls. Just a little bit. Enough for the Doctor to go on.

He avoids the Earth like the plague. In the couple of months that ensue, the TARDIS suggests it quite a few times. He ignores it. Tension builds between himself and his spaceship, which is more than a little awkward.

But when the old girl picks up a strange signal that she cannot translate coming from Lampsa, a planet deserted for centuries in the galaxy of Andromeda, he cannot resist the lure. He sets the coordinates without a second thought, a little smile of excitement perched on his lips. A smile that’s been absent from his face for seven months now. Give or take a few hours. Not that he’s counting.

The TARDIS lands, and the Doctor opens the door swiftly. The thrill of the unknown hums through his veins. He steps out into the darkness, oh so eager to explore. The atmosphere is thick with dust. He notices he’s standing on sand. Fog surrounds him. He cannot see much. Three moons hover above, clustered together, and shining their eery, dim light on the surface of Lampsa. He takes out the sonic screwdriver, and scans the area. The signal is weak, and the sonic just about picks it up. Whether whatever’s transmitting it is buried beneath him, or he simply landed on the other side of the planet, he can’t tell. What intrigues him most about the signal though is its complete lack of repetitiveness. There is no discernible pattern at all. It’s a series of whirring, intermitted noises, of different duration and pitch. It’s no distress signal, for starters. Every single civilisation throughout the universe has a short, characteristic distress signal, that repeats itself over and over again. The exact opposite of what he’s now hearing. Oh, he loves it when something’s not what he expected it to be.

Carefully, and straining his eyes to see through the dust, he ventures farther away from the TARDIS. He’s not been walking long, when he sees a light shimmering through the fog in the distance. He makes his way towards it with determination. He reaches it in less than a quarter of an hour. He is greeted by a big, fancy spaceship. He has the sudden need to comfort his old girl.

People in spacesuits-he cannot yet determine species-bustle around the spaceship, unloading equipment onto the surface of the planet. He walks up to the nearest person, and greets him.

“Hello, I’m the Doctor”, he says, smiling like a maniac.

The spacesuit jumps back in fright, before unceremoniously pointing a gun at him.

“Where the hell did you come from?”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you there! Just landed, actually, like you. Well, not like you, my spaceship’s tiny bit different… Well, when I say different…”

“What the bloody hell are you on about? Who are you? How did you get here? This planet’s not been inhabited for centuries!”

“Jasper, leave the poor man alone, he means no harm. He simply has no tact to speak of”, says a surprisingly familiar female voice behind him.

He turns abruptly. Another spacesuit is approaching. The shield of the spacesuit helmet dissolves. The cheeky smile and curly hair of River Song greet him.

“Hello, sweetie.”

He stands there, staring at her for a few seconds.

“How are you here? You can’t be here!”, he exclaims seriously.

“Spoilers”, she says mischievously. “I’m glad to see you too, pretty boy.”

He cannot stop staring at her.

“River, what are you doing here?”

“I might ask the same of you”, she says, making to remove her helmet.

“No, no, no, no, no!”, exclaims the Doctor. “Atmosphere’s too rich in oxygen, you’ll have severe brain damage before you can say Quidditch.”

“But what about you? You’re not wearing a suit”, asks Jasper, still pointing his gun at the Doctor.

“Time Lord. Different biology”, he explains.

“You what?”

“He’s not human, Jasper”, says River.

“Well, he looks human to me”, Jasper insists.

“I know for a fact that I’m not, Jasper, sorry to disappoint.”

“But-”

“Jasper, why don’t you tell the boss we’ll have the expertise of the Doctor at hand? He’ll be very happy to know you’re here”, she smiles at the Doctor.

“The Doctor? Doctor who?”, asks Jasper.

The Doctor and River exchange a smile.

“Just the Doctor, Jasper. He’ll know who you mean.”

Jasper huffs. He toddles off slowly, his spacesuit and unwillingness hindering him in equal parts. The Doctor gazes at River intently, trying-and failing-to understand who she is and how she came to be here.

“How would your boss know who I am?”

“Oh, I’ve told him all about you, sweetie.”

“Why?”

“A woman likes to boast of her fellow”, she shrugs, an impish grin spreading on her face.

“River, you…”

“Ah, ah, ah! Spoilers, sweetie, don’t forget! Our timelines are moving in opposite directions. We can’t tell one word of what we know of the other’s future. Your rules, remember?”

He doesn’t. He realises with a shudder that he _will_ tell her. In his future. In her past. The Doctor cannot help but stare at her in somber curiosity. This is dangerous. Too dangerous.

“You got the signal too, I presume?”, she asks, bringing his attention back to the task at hand.

“Yes. Strange signal. TARDIS picked it up. Couldn't translate it, though.”

The Doctor keeps the sonic out in front of him, desperately trying to find a stronger signal to follow. He can hear it faintly, like the low humming of an insect in the background on a summer’s day, but the sonic is having trouble locating it. He begins to move away from the spaceship. River follows.

“So it’s not an actual signal.”

“Weeeell, no.”

The share an excited smile.

“We picked it up also”, River explains, adapting her pace to his. “We knew that there’s not been a trace of even the most basic life form on Lampsa for a million years, so we thought we’d investigate. A science team from the university are trying to find the exact location of the transmission point. We archeologists decided to tag along, see if we can find anything about the ancient civilisation that was here before whatever caused their extinction.”

“Gerders”, supplies the Doctor, eyes focused on the sonic. “Curious species. Tiny heads. Very advanced technologically.”

“Did you come here while they were still living people on Lampsa?”

“Nah. I’ve read about them. Might visit them in the future, though.”

“Well, I cannot see how we’ll be able to gather any information on them”, sighs River. “Every sign of civilisation seems to have been erased from the face of the planet.”

“It’s been too long since that meteorite struck…”, mutters the Doctor.

“Meteorite?”

“Yeah. Half the planet was burning in a matter of hours. A solar storm happened a few days later. The solar flares burnt up what few organisms had managed to survive.”

“But there is no trace, no trace at all, of any living thing! Not even parasites or microorganisms. Shouldn’t something have grown again, so many years later?”

“Have you noticed the dust?”, asks the Doctor, taking out his glasses, and placing them on his nose. “Have you noticed what we’re standing on? Hmm?”

He sits on his haunches, and picks up a handful of sand. He examines it closely.

“We’re… on a mountain”, River realises, as she looks across the plane that’s spreading down in front of them. “A mountain of sand.”

“Exactly. The rain is so acid, that the sea changes colour, and solid rock crumbles to dust. No organism stands a chance on this planet. Not any more.”

“The sea changes colour?”, River cannot help but wonder in disbelief.

“Chemical reaction. The sea is very basic, the rain is very acidic, and it’s also rich in phenolphthalein. When it rains, the sea turns pink.”

The rumble of thunder overhead drowns River’s reply.

“A thunderstorm is coming”, says the Doctor, looking at the clouds in the sky. “We should head back to the spaceship.”

“Why? We could collect samples of sand, have them analysed. Maybe we could then come to some conclusion about…”

“How do your communications work, River?”, the Doctor interrupts her.

“Electromagnetic waves, of course, same as anyone’s. Why?”, she asks perplexed. She doesn’t need the Doctor to answer her. “Oh. Thunderstorms prevent telecommunications…”

“Oh yes. I think we should go back.”

“Come now, Doctor, it’s just a thunderstorm. It can’t be that bad”, says River, resisting the Doctor’s tugging of her hand.

He stops, and turns to look at her intently.

“The Gerbers were a very technologically advanced race. Except for one thing: they never dabbled in telecommunications or aviation.”

“But… why?”

He looks at the lightning forming above their heads in worry.

“The thunderstorms are too strong-and almost constant.”

A lightning strikes a few feet away from where they’re standing. The Doctor grabs River’s hand.

“Come on, let’s go back.”

This time, she doesn’t resist.

* * *

They make it to the fancy spaceship unscathed. The first thing the Doctor notices is the little, unimpressive, fragile looking man, shouting his head off in the control room. His eyes are ready to pop out of their sockets, his hands flail in fury, and his shoulders beneath the white spacesuit are so tense, the Doctor cannot help but wonder how they’ve not broken yet.

“Someone’s in a pickle”, he mutters to River, eyebrows high on his forehead as he nods in the little man’s direction.

“Rachel”, River stops a girl as she’s passing by, “what’s up with Kimani?”

Rachel’s face clouds with fear before their very eyes.

“Communications are down. The guys up at IT Support can’t fix it.”

She’s gone before they can so much as blink.

“Rogers, let me get this into your thick skull; I want to be able to complain about crap space food to the operator back at the university within the next half-hour, or you’re spending the night out there digging with your bare hands down to wherever this bloody signal’s coming from, _is that perfectly clear?_ ”, shouts the little man.

The Doctor wonders where he’s been keeping all that air.

River takes him up to the little man.

“ _What_ is it, Doctor Song?”, asks the little man exasperated. “I am not interested in archeology at the moment, nor will I be till I can hear the Dean’s squeaky voice whining about expenditure through those damned speakers!”

“This is the Doctor, Professor”, she says, an ironic smile on her face. “Doctor, this is Kimani Jeptoo, professor of Radio Astrophysics at the Lunar University, and head of this expedition. He can be more composed. But only occasionally.”

“Charming, as always, River”, deadpans Kimani.

“I do my best, dear”, she winks playfully at him.

“I have heard much about you, Doctor, most of which I dare say is a gross exaggeration”, says Kimani, sizing him up.

The Doctor briefly pauses to wonder how Professor Jeptoo would have spoken to him if he _wasn’t_ happy to see him.

“Well, I haven’t heard anything about you, so it’s safe to assume that history won’t remember you in any way, exaggerated or otherwise.”

_Ooh, sassy! You tell ‘im, spaceman. But don’t you get your head in the clouds, you’re vain enough as it is…_

_Stop it!_ , he shouts at Donna’s voice in his head. Now is _not_ the time.

“Down, boys! We need to work together”, River intervenes.

Kimani huffs.

“Very well”, sighs Kimani. “We seem to be in need of you. What can you tell us?”

“Well”, starts the Doctor, his enthusiasm returning full force, “the Gerbers were the most advanced life form of…”

“Keep the lecture for the archeologists, Doctor, time is a factor. To the point; why are our communications down, and what can we do about them? And once we’ve restored them, how can we track the signal that brought us here in the first place, and see what’s transmitting it?”

River’s hand lightly touches his forearm. It succeeds in soothing him enough to continue.

“Thunderstorm. The planet’s atmosphere is very turbulent. Thunderstorms are almost constant on any part of Lampsa. I doubt that you’ll be able to communicate with ground control till you’re out of the planet’s atmosphere.”

A wave of exhaustion washes over the little man. Kimani rubs his eyes tiredly, and lets out a sigh. He mumbles something under his breath. The Doctor has a strong suspicion it was ‘Bugger’.

“Hold on”, says Kimani, weariness creeping into his voice. “If electromagnetic waves have such a hard time traveling in this atmosphere, then how come we detected a signal coming from here?”

The Doctor manic smile lights up his face like a neon sign. His eyebrows travel up, up, up his forehead in happy excitement.

“Now you’re asking the right questions! I don’t know. The sonic can detect it, even if only faintly, bu- oh! OH!”

He takes out the sonic screwdriver, and flips it in his hand.

“The sonic? What’s a sonic?”, Kimani asks, perplexed.

“Sonic screwdriver”, River supplies.

“A _what_ screwdriver?”

“A sonic. Doctor, what about the screwdriver?”, asks River impatiently.

Kimani reaches for the sonic in silent wonder. The Doctor dodges his hand.

“The sonic can detect it, River, but hardly anything else can! Think! The sonic!”

The bewilderment in her face is not helping. Kimani snaps out of his stupor.

“You cannot seriously believe that the signal we got is actually _sound_ , can you?”

“Well, the TARDIS picked up the signal, but couldn’t translate it, which is odd, well, improbable, well, impossible, because of the Translation Circuit, and since I got here, I haven’t been able to trace it. But I know it’s there, because I can hear it. And so can you, if you focus hard enough.”

“That’s all very well, Doctor, but you seem to be forgetting a tiny little detail; if electromagnetic waves have trouble leaving the atmosphere, what chance would sound waves stand, hmm? And even if they did manage that, how on earth would we detect them at the University? A million light years filled with void and black holes separate Lampsa from home! Or have you forgotten that sound doesn’t travel through the void?”

A smile, big, happy and bright, appears on the Doctor’s face.

“That’s what we know. But imagine if someone developed the technology to make sound-any wave really-able to travel through the void, uninhibited by anything, even the gravitational pull of black holes.”

“That is not possible”, says Kimani seriously.

The smile grows bigger.

“I know. That’s why I love it when impossible things happen.”

“Enough speculation! We need facts to form any sort of theories. We need to find whatever’s transmitting this… _thing_ ”, says Kimani. “Brown! Saleri! Nonari! Bring out the drill!”

Kimani continues to shout orders as he makes his way towards the control room.

It takes mere minutes for a team to assemble by the doors of the fancy spaceship, equipment and all, ready to venture out on the wasteland that is Lampsa.

Helmets secure, oxygen tanks working on their full capacity, the team follows the Doctor and River down the mountain, and into the valley. It is a slow business. When they finally arrive, Kimani instructs the scientists where to drill, and at what speed. The Doctor and River stand a little to the back. There is not much for them to do.

The portable drill has not been digging long, when the earth beneath their feet rumbles. At first, they think it is the thunderstorm. But the rumbling continues. Slowly, it gets louder. There is no mistaking it for the thunderstorm anymore. The earth is shaking violently beneath their feet. Kimani shouts to the operators of the drill to stop. It doesn’t help.

Panic is plainly written across Kimani’s face as he turns to the Doctor.

“Earthquake?”, he shouts, trying to be heard over all the noise.

The Doctor looks at the ground. Water is starting to appear in a thin line between them. There is no end in sight for the little stream that’s come out of nowhere. He looks at the clustered moons through the clouds. He looks back at the water.

“No”, he tells Kimani.

“Then what?”, asks River, staring at him.

“It’s the tide. The tide is coming in. This is no valley”, says the Doctor, his eyes wide with realisation and fear. “This is a bay. RUN!”

The whole team is paralysed. They look at the Doctor with disbelief. The stream is slowly getting bigger. No one moves.

“Don’t just stand there, RUN!”, shouts the Doctor again.

He grabs River’s arm, and runs towards the fancy spaceship on top of the hill with long strides. He turns back to see if the others are following them. They are a little behind them, but at least they’ve started running. As he turns back towards the spaceship, the Doctor catches Kimani out of the corner of his eye. He’s still frozen, looking at the great wave of water that has suddenly appeared at the far end of the bay. The rumbling is getting louder. The shaking is getting worse.

“Kimani!”, screams River.

He remains unmoved.

The Doctor turns back. He reaches him as the wave is gaining speed. Their feet are surrounded by water.

“We need to go _now_ ”, shouts the Doctor.

There is no moving Kimani. The Doctor grabs his hand, and forces him to run up the slope. It’s getting more and more difficult. The water is rising fast. River is suddenly by his side. “Take my hand”, she shouts over the noise of the rushing water.

The Doctor does as he is told. There is no escaping the tide, he realises. He doesn’t give up. He pushes on. But River has stopped, and she’s holding his hand with a vice. She places it over her wrist, along with Kimani’s trembling hand.

Suddenly, the noise stops. The Doctor can feel every particle of his body detaching itself from its neighbour. He feels nauseated.

It all stops as quickly as it began. He looks around at the blinding light that invades his eyes. They are standing in the middle of the fancy spaceship, drenched to the bone. Everyone is staring at them.

River lets go of their hands. The Doctor swiftly takes hold of her left forearm, and raises it to his eyes.

“Jack Harkness’s Vortex Manipulator”, he breathes. “Where did you get that?”, he asks her in a dangerous whisper.

“An old friend gave it to me”, shrugs River, avoiding his searching eyes.

“It’s not supposed to work. _I_ made sure it wasn’t working.”

“Well, that old friend, he knows a thing or two about Vortex Manipulators”, says River.

The Doctor tries to protest. River shushes him.

“It got us out alive, didn’t it?”

That shuts him up.

By their side, Kimani collapses.

“Rachel!”, shouts River. “Fetch the doctor!”

A flurry of movement surrounds the Doctor, as Kimani is moved to the medical bay to be treated. But all that he can see is Jack’s Vortex Manipulator on River’s wrist.

He wakes up from his stupor when someone accidentally bumps against him. He makes his way towards the door of the spaceship.

“The others… The team… Did they make it back?”, he asks frantically around. “Are they here yet? Does anyone know…”

It’s a full hour before the door opens, revealing two of the original team that went down the slope to drill.

“The others?”, asks the Doctor, despite already knowing the answer.

They shake their heads.

“They didn’t… We couldn’t…”, mumbles Saleri.

Survivor’s guilt. The Doctor can smell it off them a mile off. He’s smelt it too often on himself.

“I know”, he says softly to her, and squeezes her shoulder.

She nods, and tears spring in her eyes.

* * *

He sits on one of the benches outside the medical bay. His elbows are on his knees, his chin perched on his palms, the nine hundred years of his life evident in his eyes. This whole affair reminds him dangerously of the Library. At least he knew what he was up against in the Library. At least Donna was there.

He shakes his head. He refuses to walk down that particular lane at the moment. Even if he can hear her asking if he’s all right. Guilt rises in his chest; it should’ve been him asking her if she was all right that day.

The bench squeaks, as someone sits beside him. He turns to see River’s curly hair.

“He’ll be fine. Shock. And a bit of water in the lungs. The force of the water breached his helmet.”

The Doctor nods.

River sighs.

“Every time I see you, you are worse for wear”, she tells him.

He doesn’t reply. He actively avoids her gaze.

“How long has it been?”

“Since what?”

“Since the reality bomb. Since you wiped her memory.”

“How do you…”

“Spoilers”, she smiles sadly. “Oh…”, she says, realisation dawning on her face. “It’s just happened for you, hasn’t it?”

Again, he doesn’t reply. She presses his hand gently.

“Do not underestimate the DoctorDonna, Doctor.”

He turns to look at her so fast, his neck makes a cracking noise.

But before he can get a chance to demand how in the name of all that is holy she knows about the DoctorDonna, the door to the medical bay opens, and a woman in a white coat steps out.

“Professor Jeptoo would like to speak to you and the Doctor”, she says to River.

They rise, and follow her into the room.

The little man is lying on the hospital bed, looking better than either expected he would. He tries to sit up. The doctor begs him not to. He waves her off.

“How are you feeling?”, asks the Doctor, putting his hands in his pockets.

“Good. Now, tell me”, says Kimani, “did the others make it back?”

“Brown and Saleri did”, says River gently. “The others were lost. And so was the equipment.”

Kimani passes a hand over his eyes. A sigh escapes his lips.

“We need to find out what the devil is transmitting this thing. And as soon as we have done that, we get the bloody hell out of this place.”

“Perhaps you should…”, begins the Doctor.

“We are doing the job we came here to do, Doctor”, says Kimani with determination. “Then we go home.”

The Doctor nods.

“Now, how do you propose we go about doing that?”

The Doctor and River exchange a glance. Time to bring the old girl in.

* * *

Within the next half hour, the Doctor has materialised the TARDIS in the big, fancy spaceship of the Lunar University. A few archeologists, finding themselves unoccupied because of the lack of anything to observe on the planet, look at the old girl in wonder, snapping pictures of her in all her blue glory. The face of the Earth hasn’t seen a blue police box in nearly thirty centuries.

The Doctor pays them no attention. He is busy running a basic scan of the planet’s crust. What exactly he’s looking for, he doesn’t know. He’ll recognise it, whatever it is, once it appears on the screen. He’s looking at the screen, specs perched on his nose, as if his life depends on it. The search completes. Nothing.

“Come _on_!”, he shouts, running around the console, pressing levers, thumping knobs and turning switches.

The door opens. River steps in.

“How’s it going, pretty boy?”

_Ooh, that came out a bit quick._

_NO._

“I can’t find anything out of the ordinary”, he says, annoyed.

“Make a more detailed search, then. There’s something beneath the ground, you know there is.”

He nods. He decides to ignore River’s bossiness. He programs the TARDIS to run a scan on a subatomic level. Better be safe than sorry.

It takes longer than the previous scan. But it shows a small cavity, two kilometres bellow the surface.

“Aha! There you are!”, shouts the Doctor triumphantly.

River smiles. She snaps her fingers. The doors of the TARDIS close with a thud.

“Shall we?”

“What? No, no, no, no, you’re not coming.”

She arches her eyebrow. He huffs in annoyance.

“No taking off your helmet, got it?”, he says.

She smiles mischievously in responce.

He circles the console, pressing buttons, turning clogs, slamming switches. River does the same. He follows her with his eyes, brows creased. She knows her stuff. He doesn’t voice the million questions that bubble in his throat.

The TARDIS takes off. It thrashes in the Vortex. It only takes a few seconds. The column stills. The noise subsides. The Doctor and River look at each other. Their eyebrows are high on their foreheads.

“We’re here”, says the Doctor.

They exchange a smile. The Doctor rushes to the door. He swings it open. He looks out.

The cavity is the size of skyscraper. A dim light shines from the lava beneath. A spaceship is stuck on the far wall. It shimmers in the orange glow.

Within a minute, he’s coughing his lungs out. He closes the door. He collapses on the floor. River runs over to him.

“Doctor?”, she asks anxiously. “Doctor, are you all right?”

“G-gas…”, he gasps between coughs. “Oxygen shield’s d-down.”

She runs down the corridor. After awhile, she returns with a glass of water. He gulps it down thirstily. He breathes deeply.

“How did you know where the kitchen is?”

“Spoilers. Now, go put your suit on.”

He follows her advice. When he returns to the console room, clad in his bright orange spacesuit, River is in front of the monitor, examining the spaceship.

“Do you recognise the technology?”, she asks.

“No”, he frowns.

“Neither do I. It’s not of any ancient civilisations I’ve seen…”

“Could’ve crashed here from the future…”, he muses. “We need to get in. There might be survivors.”

He navigates the TARDIS above the spaceship. He locates a trap door. Slowly, carefully, River and the Doctor lower themselves onto the ship. The Doctor sonics the trap door. It opens with a thud. River goes in first. The Doctor follows. They wander around. The spaceship is deserted. It looks like it’s been like this for a very long time.

They make their way to the cockpit. They pass skeletons in spacesuits in the corridors. River stops to examine them.

“Poor souls”, she mumbles. “How on earth did they end up here?”, she asks bemused.

The Doctor shakes his head. He doesn’t know.

She takes out her scanner, and starts running tests. The Doctor moves on to the cockpit. Two more corpses are sitting in there, perched on the pilot seats. He pays them no attention. He turns his mind on the engines. They have shut down. They’re not working. He notices that the mikes are on. And the mikes are connected to a device he doesn’t recognise. He picks it up, and examines it. Realisation dawns on him. He smiles. It’s like he imagined; technology that enables any kind of wave to transmit throughout the universe. He plugs it out, and pockets it. He needs to disassemble it, find out how it works.

He fumbles through scattered papers about the control panels. A photograph catches his eye. He ignores it. A second later, he’s searching for it. He’s as pale as a sheet. He finds it. His eyes rake over it.

Most of it is singed. But there is no mistaking the floppy hair, pinstripe suit, brainy specs, manic smile. He’s staring at a picture of himself. He has his arm around a woman. A woman with ginger hair.

Her face is blackened. He cannot make out who she is, no matter how hard he tries. One thing is certain; it isn’t Donna. It can’t be. This photo will be taken sometime in his future. And Donna is gone. She won’t be in his future.

“Doctor!”, comes River’s voice.

He lets the photo drop back on the mess of papers. This is dangerous. They should leave.

He makes his way hurriedly back to where River is. She’s sitting on her haunches, frowning at her scanner.

“This is no recorded species. I can’t find it anywhere.”

“We should really leave”, says the Doctor.

“But we haven’t found out what caused the signal yet.” 

“Oh, yes, we have”, he says, taking the device out of his pocket.

She smiles lopsidedly.

He lets her go up through the trap door first. As he’s waiting for her to climb the ladder, he looks out the tiny window. He gazes at the shimmering nothingness. He sees the fuel tank beneath the tail of the spaceship. And he realises why he nearly choked to death.

There is a crack in the tank, through which all the fuel has escaped. The atmosphere outside is a bomb, ready to be detonated any second. All it takes is a single spark.

River is lifting the lid of the trap door. Her torso is outside the spaceship, and she is slowly lifting herself out of the door. Before the Doctor manages to warn her, she loses her footing. Her metal oxygen tank rubs against the metal railing of the ladder. A horrible, deafening noise breaks the silence. The friction sends sparks flying around them.

“NO!”, he shouts.

He points the sonic to the Vortex Manipulator on River’s wrist. His hand barely has time to close around her wrist. As soon as they’re in the TARDIS, the Doctor sonics a dial: the emergency take-off. Once they’re safely on their way to the surface, the Doctor hugs River fiercely. He doesn’t realise he’s mumbling ‘Not again, not again…’

River looks at him, wide-eyed and scared. She doesn’t ask questions. She simply avoids meeting his eyes. Understanding passes over her features.

Once they land inside the fancy spaceship on the surface, Rachel flings the doors open, and steps inside, terrified.

“We heard you”, she says breathlessly. “We were afraid you… Oh, I’m glad you’re okay!”, she says, and flings herself on River.

* * *

It’s a good two hours before the Doctor manages to get in the TARDIS, alone, and put the old girl in the Vortex. It feels like a century. His mind is buzzing with unanswered questions. They’ve quadrupled since he landed on Lampsa. He hopes the device in his pocket will help answer some of them.

He had to explain to Kimani everything. Even about River’s Vortex Manipulator. He didn’t mention Jack. There was no point. Kimani demanded from the Doctor to hand over the device he discovered in the buried spaceship. There was no room for arguing in the Doctor’s refusal. He said goodbye to River. She squeezed his forearm before letting him go.

“Have faith, Doctor. You will make it”, she whispered in his ear.

She turned, and didn’t look back.

Oh, he’s tired. No. _Exhausted._ He’s weary. He can feel his eyes closing. He heads to the kitchen; a nice cuppa, definitely with a shot of brandy in it, and a couple of bananas will do the trick. He’s just put the kettle on, when the sound of his phone going off shatters the desperate silence hanging around him.

“Hello?”, he answers, curiosity battling with exhaustion for dominance over his voice.

“Doctor?”, comes Martha’s voice from the other end of the line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay!  
> Anyway, this is a big un!
> 
> Don't forget to drop a comment, they make my day ;)


	4. Chapter 4

Donna Noble isn’t leading an extraordinary life. She knows that better than anyone. Having a mother who constantly reminds you of how inadequate you are helps with that. Temp work in the mornings, tea and reality telly in the afternoons, gossipy nights at the pub with her girlfriends. Squeeze in there the occasional boyfriend. It’s not great, but it has a few laughs, a sense of usefulness and the feeling of belonging. Even if she _is_ the odd one out, and she knows it. She’s happy with it. It’s enough. There are people who can’t even boast that much, and even though she’s never had such a philosophical view of her life, she does now.

Because Donna Noble is not happy anymore.

She doesn’t realise it immediately. It comes on gradually. It begins as a slight annoyance. It becomes a weariness, a lack of energy, and the unwillingness to do much. It’s three months before it hits Donna with the force of a bullet. She is not happy.

She can’t place exactly when she stopped being happy. It’s all been business as usual. Except, after that weird planet thing(which she missed- _again_ ), she’s been feeling… different. Her work, while paying for her weekly Hello! and Cosmopolitan magazines, feels mundane, and even said magazines suddenly bore her. Chiswick seems positively medieval, and when she’s with the girls in the pub, her mind wanders off, and she stays silent and melancholy, where once she’d be at the thick of it, cracking nasty jokes with the best of them.

She tries to be her happy, carefree, irresponsible self, but she fails so badly, she wonders how she ever did it in the first place. An immense sadness, a sadness she cannot explain, is clouding her life. She blames Lance at first. Lance and his infidelity. Lance jilting her at the altar(at least, that’s what they tell her happened-in her mind, the details are a bit fuzzy, but the outcome is the same; she’s still single, old Donna). Then she recalls, even if that period is strangely hazy in her memory, that she’d been fine, even good, after that. So why is she depressed now? When she zones out, she catches glimpses of her gramps looking at her with such worry in his eyes, that she fears she might be terminally ill and not know about it. She feels fine, slight headaches that are becoming more and more frequent aside.

Then there’s the fact that Wilf seems obsessed with going up the hill. Oh, he went out there all right, propped up his telescope, and lost track of time looking at the stars, but now he goes _every night_. Even in the bitterest cold, or the heaviest rain. Donna warns him not to go when the weather’s bad. He just smiles sadly, pats her hand, and firmly zips up his coat, before starting the trek up the hill.

But what really sets off alarm bells in her mind is her mother. Quick as she always was to point out her failings and put her down as often as humanely possible, her mum is now a stark contrast to that; she worries over her headaches, supports her to everything she does, even if it is turning down a date because she’s not feeling too well.

Despite the inexplicable sadness, there are moments when her wit and sarcasm shine bright as daylight. She looks into the face of the person she’s talking to, and expects to see a lop-sided, amused grin. She can never explain how this thought is formed in her queer head. She only knows she’s disappointed that the grin is never there.

* * *

The sudden revelation that she’s not happy with her life isn’t the only thing that plagues Donna Noble. There are times when, without any apparent reason, she gets the feeling that she _must_ do something; be somewhere very specific, or buy something she’s little or no need of.

Like that time she called in sick, and took the train down to Brighton. She still can’t explain why exactly she did that. She woke that morning with a feeling that she _had_ to be in Brighton that day. She had no work there. She didn’t know anyone who lived there. She simply jumped on the next train, took a stroll down the high street, sat on a bench by the sea eating chips, took the train home, and that was that. Nothing had happened, yet she felt that her visit to Brighton had fulfilled its purpose, whatever that was.

Or that time she’d gone into four different bookstores looking for a vintage edition of ‘Death in the Clouds’ by Agatha Christie. A very specific vintage edition, with a giant wasp on the cover.

Or even her sudden interest in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, and the burning of Pompeii.

When she starts talking about the 20.000 people that lost their lives that day down at the pub, her friends stare. Nerys looks at her as if she’s mad.

There’s no explaining her sudden interest in Roman History. But there is a burning need inside her to know that someone, _anyone_ , managed to survive. When her gramps finds her still awake at three in the morning one night, nose buried in a thick volume about the history of Pompeii that she’s borrowed from the local library, his face nearly breaks with worry. He asks-no, _pleads_ -to let it rest.

“It all happened so long ago, sweetheart, it no longer matters”, he reasons.

His eyes are sad. Donna knows he’s right. She cannot deny his logic. But sadness fills her. Sadness for a place she’s never seen, for people she’s never met, in a time she wasn’t even living. So she closes the book, returns it the next morning, and studiously avoids the subject of Pompeii.

The days that she gets those compulsive urges are the best. Purpose returns, even for a little while, into her life, and lifts the cloud a bit. But as time trudges on, or at least that’s how Donna feels time passes these days, the lost contentment of her life becomes what it truly is: emptiness. Even if Donna’s life hasn’t changed in any way over the last four months, she feels like she’s known what it is to live, to truly _live_ a full life. And she’s somehow lost it again. And this realisation nearly cripples her.

She debates visiting a psychiatrist. She decides against it.

She knows she’s being ridiculous. Nothing’s changed. She’s always been Donna Noble, fastest temp in Chiswick, armed only with her sharp tongue in order to survive. So on she goes, living a life that is no longer enough, with the disconcerting feeling at the back of her head that she’s missing something, or some _one_ , important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew, finally! Sorry guys, Scrivener trouble that's resolved at last!
> 
> Couldn't NOT include a Donna POV chapter... I do love her so!
> 
> Don't forget to drop a comment!


	5. Chapter 5

The Doctor paces up and down the pavement in front of the TARDIS. Hands deep in his pockets, head bent, he only lifts his eyes to check on a passerby. He’s always disappointed. Maybe he should check he’s landed on the correct time zone? He’s about to ask a man in a suit walking quickly down the road for the time. But a voice stops him.

“Doctor!”

He raises his eyes, and sees Martha on the other side of the road, broad smile on her face, waving at him. His own lips break into a smile so big, so melancholy and glad, it almost splits his face in two.

He has to patiently wait for the light to turn green for pedestrians, so that Martha can cross the road. The moment her foot touches the pavement, he scoops her in a crushing hug. He hears her giggle. But she’s holding on just as tightly. It’s a few moments before they let go. Once they do, they both notice the wetness of the other’s eyes. Neither says anything.

He notices Martha looking behind him, searching. He ignores it.

“Oh, I have missed you, Martha Jones.”

She smiles.

“So have I, Doctor.”

“So… Coffee?”, he asks.

She nods vigorously.

“You’re buying, mate!”

He starts walking down the street. She doesn’t follow. He turns, and looks at her quizzically.

“Can we… go somewhere else? Sorry to ask, but… I’d really, _really_ like to go somewhere. For old time’s sake?”

He smiles that same melancholy, sincere smile.

“‘Course we can!” He offers her his hand. “Allons-y!”

They walk into the TARDIS. Martha’s drinking in the sight of the console room.

“Anywhere particular you’d like to go, m’lady?”

“Somewhere strange and beautiful, where we can have a conversation without being interrupted because of a dangerous, and potentially lethal, situation.”

The Doctor frowns.

“That’s very precise…”, he says. _And difficult_ , he adds mentally. He stands there, thinking for a moment. “Oh, I know!”

He starts moving round the console, setting in the coordinates, preparing the old girl for flight. It is a sight for sore eyes, and Martha cannot stop the wistfulness in her eyes. She doesn’t say anything, content to hear the sound of take-off filling the room.

Once they’re in the Vortex, the inevitable question is voiced.

“So, where’s Donna?”, Martha asks conversationally.

She expects to hear that she’s visiting her family. Or that she’s asleep. She waits for an answer, not bothering to look at him. But as the silence stretches, she slowly turns towards the console. He’s leaning over it, hands gripping the side with a vice. His face is hard, old, relentless. Lines have appeared around his eyes.

“Gone.”

His voice is low, no more that a whisper. As soon as he says it, he focuses on piloting the TARDIS again. Martha is aware that he’s avoiding looking at her. Her lips part slightly. She wants to say something. She cannot think of much. She sees how sad he has become at the mention of Donna. Curiosity wins, and words leave her throat.

“What? How…”

“She’s gone.”

At last, he looks up at her. His gaze has a finality to it, that makes Martha assume the worst. It’s clear that he will not elaborate.

The whooshing of landing fills the room, shattering the heavy silence that’s fallen between the two friends. It takes a moment longer than usual, but the Doctor’s eyebrows rise on his forehead. The little excited smile appears on his face. The smile of adventure.

She lets it rest.

“Where are we, then?”, she asks, smile returning to her face.

“New Seattle, on the planet Ivy, in the Galaxy of Andromeda, during the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Also known as Coffee City!”

Martha can barely contain herself. She abandons all pretence, and practically pounces at the doors, opening them so quickly they bang on the wall of the console room.

“Oh, I’ve missed this”, she mutters, as she feels the breeze of a different planet, a different _galaxy_ on her face, and drinks in the pale yellow sky above her.

New Seattle stretches before her, shrouded by a grey smoke that can only be pollution. _Some things never change_ , she muses. But the smell of coffee reminds her of what they’re doing there.

“So, Coffee City?”, she asks, as the Doctor begins to stroll towards the city, hands deep in his trouser pockets.

“Yup. A bunch of archeologists”-he cringes a little at the word-“discovered a Starbucks shop back from the 22nd century. They quite liked the sound of lattes, so coffee shop owners decided to give it a go. Et voila: New Seattle! Population: 3.6 million. Number of coffee shops: half a million.”

“Half a million?!”

“Oh, yes! This city’s main economy comes from coffee tourism. Coffee shops everywhere! And we’re going to the very best. Isn’t that brilliant? Come on!”

He grabs her hand, and leads her towards the city. Giggles bubble in her chest. Even the Doctor seems genuinely happy at this moment. If he holds on a little tighter than he used to, Martha pretends not to notice. For now, they can pretend to be content. Even if neither of them really is.

“Will we be able to find a Seattle Latte, d’you reckon?”

“Martha Jones, we’ll be able to find lattes a lot better than a Seattle Latte. There’s the New Seattle Latte, even if it’s a bit too peppery for me. Still, if you’re into that sort of thing, I suppose it’s nice… Ah, but I like the Banana Choc Chip Chewy Toffee Latte! With a sprinkle of salt on top, to keep things exciting!”

“How about an Ivy-inspired latte? With some native fruit you don’t get on Earth, or… oh, I don’t know!”

“Ah, for the adventurous palettes, such as yours, Doctor Jones, soon to be Doctor Milligan, I’d suggest the Pluto Latte.”

He expects a giggle. Or at least the question what a Pluto Latte actually is. He receives neither. In fact, she’s ominously quiet. He looks at her, and the smile drops from his face. She’s looking dejectedly at the floor moving beneath her feet.

“Martha? Is everything all right?”

She looks up at him, a sad smile playing about her lips. She raises her left hand.

“What?”, he asks perplexed.

“Seriously?”, she says exasperated.

Her fourth finger draws his attention; it is ringless. _Oh. Right._

He hugs her fiercely, trying, and failing miserably, not to think about Donna, and how she would’ve known exactly what to say.

“Well, come on then! Best lattes this side of the universe, and a long chat. Doctor’s orders.”

She cracks a little smile. He takes her hand, and leads her towards the coffee shop, pointing out interesting landmarks, curious things, and any other nonsense he notices as they walk.

It’s a full hour before they sit on comfortable sofas by the window, ginormous cups of lattes in front of them. They sip tentatively. Both their faces become dreamy as they swallow the first gulp.

“Oh, that is good”, says Martha, quickly taking another swig.

“Mmhmm.”

A moustache of banana cream has already appeared on the Doctor’s upper lip. He swipes it with the back of his hand.

“So… Tom”, he starts.

He almost feels the slap on his arm that Donna would have certainly given him if she’d been there. _Not now._

“No Tom, more like…”, mutters Martha.

“What happened?”

This time, he gets it right. His voice is soft. Martha’s face relaxes, and sadness appears. He wonders if this is what his face looks like when he drops the cheerful mask. But those are dangerous territories to wander. It wasn’t the same with Donna. Or wasn’t it?

“I got tired, Doctor. Tired of having to lie about my work, hide my time with you… Pretending that year that I walked the Earth never happened… Well, it happened for me. It’s real for me. I couldn’t keep on lying to him. It wasn’t fair to either of us.”

She checks the wetness in her eyes. It doesn’t become tears. But her voices cracks a little. The Doctor’s hearts sink.

“So that’s why you wanted to go far away from the Earth”, he says with a sigh.

All she manages is a nod. Silence falls, both of them lost in their own thoughts.

“I am really, really glad you called, Martha Jones.”

She looks at him. He’s sincere and sad. She smiles, and he smiles back.

“You know, you could call too once in a while.”

He grins at that.

“Well, you know me. I always mean to, but I never actually do.”

“Then you’ll just have to answer to my calls.”

They smile, and go on sipping their lattes. The gloom lasts a few minutes longer, but then it dissipates, like dew in the morning. They chat about this and that, they laugh, they exchange stories from their separate lives. For a little while, they are at peace. When it’s time to go, they slowly make their way towards the TARDIS. Martha basks in the city around them, drinking in every little detail. Once they step into the TARDIS, the Doctor heads straight for the console. Martha watches him run around, flying on his own a ship that’s meant to be driven by six, when she feels something rubbing against her legs. Frowning, she looks down.

A single black, beady eye is looking at her, surrounded by bright orange fur. Two tails are waggling on the other end of the fur, and sharp teeth are revealed, before the thing bites her ankle.

“Οuch!”

The Doctor turns.

“Oh, Charlie, there you are!”

“Charlie?!”, asks Martha.

“Yeah! Come here, boy!”

The furry thing hops to the Doctor, and he sits on his haunches to pet it.

“You’ve got a dog…”

“It’s a grumpada, Martha.”

“…with orange fur. You know, there is such a thing as being too obsessed with gingers, Doctor.”

He pretends to ignore her.

She realises that this is the only company he’s got these days, and her heart sinks.

“Why not find someone to travel with?”, she asks, her voice soft.

“Why would I do that for? I’m perfectly all right on my own.”

He’s not looking at her. He’s still petting the grumpada with one hand, as he’s flying the TARDIS with the other.

_This is worse than Rose_ , she can’t help but think. Which makes her wonder…

“Here we are, m’lady!”, shouts the Doctor, as the whooshing stops.

She smiles. This time, she’ll indulge him. Let him be.

“Thank you, Doctor. I really needed that.”

“So did I.”

She nods, and makes her way to the door. She turns back to look at him.

“You know, we should do this more often.”

“Definitely.”

They hug. She opens the door.

“Martha?”, he calls. She turns. “Talk to Tom. Tell him. Explain to him.”

For a moment, she stands still. Then she nods.

“I will.”

He smiles a brilliant smile, and she steps out, closing the door behind her.

Yes, she will talk to Tom. He’s right. He will want to know. He will understand.

With a new spring in her step, she starts walking up the road. But thoughts of Tom make her careless, and suddenly, she’s walking into someone.

“Oh, I’m sorry”, she says.

“Watch where you’re going, will you?”, comes the angry reply.

But the voice is familiar, and Martha turns to look at the person she collided with. Her mouth opens in surprise.

“Donna?”

“How do you know my name?”, she asks, even angrier than before.

“It’s Martha, remember?”

“No. I don’t know anyone called Martha. You a nut job, or something?”

The hostility hasn’t left her eyes. Such a stark contrast to when they had met.

“N-no, I made a mistake. I’m sorry”, mutters Martha.

“Bonkers, you are.”

And she’s off, red hair flying around her head as she speeds up. Martha can only stare for a few minutes. Maybe this is before Donna meets the Doctor in her timeline. Yes, that seems likely. Likely, but not right. Frowning, Martha resumes her way home, the lightness of her steps gone.

* * *

Adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose, the man from across the street follows the redhead’s movements with the intensity of a hawk stalking its prey. Martha Jones’ presence only perplexes things. He consults the metallic, hi-tech devise in his hand. No matter. Donna Noble is no threat to him. Not at the moment. He turns, and walks away.


	6. Chapter 6

He’s running as fast as his long limbs can carry him. Each breath burns his throat. He looks back, only to realise that Tasem has fallen behind.

“Come oooon!”, he shouts, and slows down to take her by the hand.

“No, no!”, she says, waving at him to speed up again. “Don’t wait for me, go on!”

“Exterminate!”

The Dalek that’s chasing them rounds the corner. There is no time to lose; if he’s to save Tasem, and the whole of Hosa City, he had better be quick. Oh, but he’s so close to reaching the door now. The door beyond which lies the portal that will trap the Dalek in the Void. He notices the green bleeping light of the lock.

“What’s the password?”, he shouts in Tasem’s general direction.

“Pompeii!”, comes her breathless reply.

His hearts nearly stop. His feet freeze, and he almost falls over. He turns to face her.

“What?”

His face is crumpled in disbelief. He cannot have heard right.

“Pompeii! Get a bloody move on!”

A Dalek ray that strikes too close for comfort snaps him out of his stupor. He starts running again towards the door. He reaches it as Tasem screams.

“Hurry up!”

In a daze, he enters the code. His hands are slightly shaking. The word forms in the little screen: _Pompeii_.

The lock turns with a reassuring thud. The door is open. But all he can do is stare at the screen.

“Move, Doctor, _move_!”, screams Tasem.

She shoves him through the door, and locks it quickly behind them.

“Come on, that door will last less than two minutes, we need to be ready to throw the Dalek in the portal by then!”

Finally, he snaps out of it, and gets busy. As he’s programming the portal to open with furiously quick moves, he cannot help but ask.

“Why Pompeii?”

Tasem looks like he’s gone mad. But the deadly serious look on the Doctor’s face makes her indulge him.

“No particular reason. Just a strange, silly word, easy to remember, and impossible to guess”, she explains, shrugging.

“But Pompeii is a city. An ancient city, on the planet Earth.”

_Which I blew up with…_

“Earth? Where’s that?”, asks Tasem, genuinely ignorant.

That puts his mind at ease. He cannot understand it, but it must be a coincidence. A heart wrenching coincidence.

* * *

Once the Dalek is safely locked into the void, he says goodbye to Tasem, and walks into the TARDIS. He stands there, leaning against the door, not bothering with his next destination. Because, truth be told, the place he most wants to be at the moment has less to do with location, and more with a certain person. Oh, he’s fighting it, every single day since he lost her. But now he can’t. So he slides to the floor, and lets all the misery of the last few months take over.

Pompeii. If, looking back, he has to point at one moment when the ‘just mates’ agreement began to be violated on his part, that would be it.

He can still feel the heat of the volcano, Donna trailing behind him, refusing to stand by and watch as 20,000 people died. Then he understood exactly what he had to do.

“It’s me. I make it happen.”

It took a moment longer for Donna to realise. But when she did, she didn’t try to change his mind. She didn’t argue that there had to be another way. She knew instantly that there wasn’t.

“Never mind us.”

In the end, it wasn’t even a choice. For either of them, no matter how difficult it was to accept that. Feeling her hands on his as he pressed the lever that blew up Pompeii was what kept him sane. Sharing the burden. Knowing that, despite the guilt, he had done the right thing. Her tear-filled eyes looking at him eased his own pain just a little bit. And, for the first time after such a dreadful choice, he was glad to live to see another day.

Her insistence on saving someone, _anyone_ , reminded him that the difficult choices of his life do not have to make him hard and unrelenting. She taught him that he can still be kind, even with the weight of the world on his shoulders. That day, she was his better.

“You were right. Sometimes I need someone”, he had said.

What he hadn’t said was that he didn’t need just anyone, he needed _her_. That feeling that began in his chest in that escape pod was terrifying. He had been sure that, with Rose gone, he was done with that sort of thing. And Donna, his magnificent Donna, had strolled into the TARDIS to prove him wrong.

“You’re not mating with me, sunshine”, she’d said, and he’d agreed.

He had been stupid. He should have known better.

At first, he ignored it. But, as time went by, it was more and more difficult to do that. Their deep connection and understanding scared him to no end. He was becoming far too attached far too quickly. When she told him she would be going home in the ATMOS factory, his hearts had each skipped a beat. Realising just how much he had come to depend on her made him shiver with dread. And she was only going to visit her family! What would she come to mean to him? Even if there was nothing more for them beyond her few, short, human years.

_And we didn’t even get those…_

“Broken moon of what?”

“I know, I know…”

He had felt stupid. He was certain she almost realised. But she let it go. And he loved her a little more for that. For being smart enough to understand that there could be no future for them. Even if her abundantly clear ‘mates only’ philosophy hurt just a tiny bit.

And then, Messaline happened. He pretended to be all right. She was having none of it. She turned him to face her, whether he liked it or not. She gently laid her hands over his hearts. He was startled, but the pain coursing through him was too great for that to show.

“You see, that pain in there. That doesn’t mean you were wrong to let her in. It proves you were right.”

There was such sadness in her eyes, he couldn’t look at her. He focused on her hands on his chest. He couldn’t help feeling that, despite her 35 short years, she knew what it was to lose someone you loved. To feel the pain.

“What do we do now?”

He looked back at her, waiting for answers. And he had got them.

“We go on. We live. We remember. What else can we do?”

He felt the loss of her hands. But he also felt her soothing words.

“Where do you want to go?”

He found it again impossible to hold her gaze.

“Let’s find a new world. For her.”

He couldn’t stop the sad smile on his face any more than he could hold back the tide. And he had never been gladder for having a companion. For having Donna Noble.

She had told him to go on. To live. To remember. That he could do nothing more. And now Donna can’t even remember him. The blood rings through his ears, and he can swear time has stopped. He takes a shuddering breath, and passes his hands over his face. It is too much.

He springs to his feet with mad energy. Enough. No more wallowing. As his brilliant Donna said, what else can he do, but remember her, and cherish their short time together?

Not wanting to be alone a moment longer, he pulls out of his pocket the phone Martha gave him. He dials her number, and waits for her to pick up. Time to look for trouble with his only remaining friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, I said I'd post a new chapter every day, but this has proven more than impossible... I'm juggling work, studying, and vacations here, give me a break!
> 
> Some might not recognise the scene I'm referring too, and that's because it's been cut from the episode('The Doctor's Daughter'). You can, however, find it on YouTube. Oh, and don't forget the tissues!
> 
> Have I mentioned how much I love Donna Noble?


	7. Chapter 7

The doors open, and in steps Martha, a perplexed smile on her face.  
“Martha!”, shouts the Doctor.  
He’s perched on the control panel, arms crossed over his chest, one Converse-clad foot over the other, hair all over the place, and the boyish lop-sided grin is plastered on his face.  
“Are you all right?”, she asks tentatively.  
“‘Course I’m all right, why wouldn’t I be?”  
“Dunno. Just… You’ve never called before, is all.”  
“Well, I did now.”  
The grin gets wider. Martha’s even more worried than before.  
“What? Can’t I call you for a quick little trip through time and space?”  
Martha’s gaze is so eloquent, he has the decency to look sheepish.  
“Right. Sorry.”  
“Anyway, what have you got in mind?”  
The grin returns full force.  
“Something new.”  
“And what would that be?”  
“Disable the Safety Circuit… Let the old girl decide… Anywhere, anywhen… No matter how dangerous…”  
For a beat, he fears that she will slap him silly, and storm out of the TARDIS. Then he notices her lips twitching, and a ginormous grin appears on her face. He mirrors her.  
“Oh, go on then!”  
He snaps his fingers, and the doors close. He turns to the console. Martha is by his side in an instant.  
“How did you do _that_?”  
He winks at her.  
“A little Time Lord magic trick.”  
“But… How? You didn’t do that when I was travelling with you.”  
“I… don’t actually know how that works…”, he says, scratching the back of his head.  
Martha does her best to hold back her giggles. She only just manages to keep it in.  
Her mirth is cut short once he pulls a lever, and darkness fills the room. The TARDIS whirs in protest.  
“Sorry, I know, I know, trust me…”, says the Doctor soothingly at the dim blue light of the column.  
It is the only light in the console room, and they can barely see each other’s outlines.  
“I’m guessing that was the Safety Circuit being deactivated”, breathes Martha.  
“You’re guessing right”, he replies in a low voice.  
In the twilight, his eyes sparkle, and the lop-sided grin slowly appears on his face again, as the TARDIS takes off. It is so contagious, this need for adventure, this thirst for the unknown and the new, that Martha, despite her heart beating fast in her chest from sheer fear, mirrors his smile. And he knows that she’s ready for whatever lies beyond those doors.  
The whirring stops. The lights remain dim. But their energy is doubled. They have arrived.  
“Allons-y!”  
He grabs her hands, and throws the TARDIS doors open. For a moment, anything is possible. As soon as they step out, they stop in their tracks.  
“We’re on… a beach”, says Martha, disbelief evident in her voice.  
The beach stretches as far as the eye can see on either side of them, deserted, desolate, but completely harmless. The Doctor turns his head in every possible direction. His brow is knit in bemusement.  
“We can’t be”, he says.  
“And yet, we obviously are. Are you sure you didn’t _activate_ the Safety Circuit?”  
“Of course I didn’t, how d’you think I’ve been travelling all this time?”,  he replies, almost offended.  
She frowns.  
“That is exactly why I’m asking.”  
“No, no, no, no, I’m certain.” He stays silent for a moment, lost in thought. “She must’ve had a reason to bring us here…”  
The Doctor’s gaze scans the area with the intensity of laser beams. He takes the sonic screwdriver out of his jacket pocket, and scans the beach.  
“Nothing…”, he says, eyebrows furrowed even more.  
He sits on his haunches, and takes a handful of sand. He brings it to eye level. He examines it. He sifts it through his fingers. He even tastes it, his tongue darting out again almost instantly in disgust.  
“Ebasa!”, he shouts. “We’re on Ebasa! But why? Why bring us here, eh, Old Girl? What are you trying to tell me?”  
It is barely a whisper. Martha nearly doesn’t hear it, with the wind and the crashing of the waves in her ears.  
He gets up, and looks intently at a forest stretching in front of them.  
“Come on!”  
They start walking towards the forest. All seems quiet and peaceful. But as soon as they step beneath the canopy of trees, a chill runs down their spine. The stillness in the wood is different. It makes their heartbeat quicken, their breaths come faster, and the hair on their arms stand. It has the distinct feeling of an unknown presence nearby.  
“Do you feel it too?”, asks Martha in a frightened whisper.  
“Oh yes”, he breathes back, his eyes scanning the trees surrounding them.  
They are being watched.  
“It might just be an animal”, says Martha, as they walk deeper into the wood.  
“It might”, replies the Doctor.  
His hand reaches for hers.  
“But you don’t think it is?”  
“No, I don’t.”  
She squeezes his hand. He squeezes back reassuringly. It doesn’t help.  
They walk on. Silence prevails. They try to regulate their breathing. Even the smallest snapping of a twig can be heard. The low murmur of the wind through the trees, the rustling of leaves, the occasional hooting of a bird sets off alarm bells in their heads. They remind themselves that these are perfectly normal noises in a forest. There must be hundreds of animals nearby, gathering food, hunting, running around.  
So why does their blood chill in their veins?  
A shadow passes above them. _A cloud_ , they both think.  
But then another shadow passes in the trees to their right. Hurried and brief, as if struggling to remain unseen.  
They both quicken their pace. But this way, they make more noise. And they notice that, with each hurried step they take, the forest is getting quieter. Eerily so.  
“Doctor…”, Martha whispers.  
“I can feel it too.”  
“Doctor, maybe we should go back.”  
He turns around in his tracks, a thunderous expression on his face.  
“I love travelling with you, you know I do, but no need to get ourselves killed without a bloody good reason.”  
She’s scared, he realises. Not of the forest. Of him. Of his recklessness. His stupid recklessness. Where has he brought them?  
“We can’t go back now. We need to know what’s going on.”  
He turns, and goes on walking.  
But he only takes a couple of steps before realising; the quietness now is complete. Only their breaths can be heard. They are sharp in fear. He can hear Martha gulping. He can hear her turning nervously about, looking, searching.  
But he cannot hear anything else.  
He is too paralysed to move.  
Suddenly she’s by his side.  
“Come on”, she says, without ever looking at him. “You need to know why the TARDIS brought us here. Let’s find out.”  
He can feel her heart beating frantically through her hand in his, but on she goes. His senses are heightened, and yet there is nothing he can detect. _Not even animals. There should’ve been animals. Why aren’t there animals?_  
In the stillness, he hears leaves rustling. He stops. He turns towards the sound.  
“Hello!”  
An overly excited Ebasan appears out of nowhere right in front of him, nearly giving him a double heart attack.  
He hears Martha swearing colourfully under her breath, hand on her chest in fright.  
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, you scared us half to death!”, the Doctor shouts.  
“I am sorry, I saw you wandering and I was afraid you were lost. Anyway, I’m Terafa, and how are you this morning?”, says the Ebasan, flashing sharp, blue teeth at them.  
The Doctor notices the little name tag on the Ebasan’s robes, with the words _Sunrise Resort_ written beneath his name.  
“Oh, hello!”, replies the Doctor, manic grin instantly in place. “I’m the Doctor, this is Martha. We’re travellers, and we’re… Well, we’re lost, as you guessed. We’re looking for somewhere to stay for a day or two. Any ideas?”  
The Ebasan’s face instantly lit up.  
“But of course! There is the magnificent Sunrise Resort, just half a mile east from here. The best on Ebasa. Fully booked for the next five years. As a matter of fact, we had a cancellation this morning, and we might be able to squeeze you in for a couple of nights”, whispers Terafa confidentially.  
“Oooh, really? We’d love that, wouldn’t we, Martha?”  
“Yeah, I suppose…”  
“Excellent, follow me!”  
They start following the Ebasan, and as they walk, the trees become fewer, and life seems to return to the forest.  
Terafa goes on and on about the features of the resort, but neither the Doctor, nor Martha, are paying any attention.  
“Play along”, he whispers to Martha.  
“With the naive, overexcited tourist act? Ok. But a seaside resort?”  
“We’re on Ebasa. The planet of seaside resorts. What else did you expect?”  
“For you to have told me that very useful piece of information right from the start? I was terrified in there.”  
He looks at her apologetically.  
“Why are we following him anyway?”, she asks.  
“Sudden cancellation while they’re booked for five years? I could smell the desperation off him a mile off. Ebasa’s resorts are famous across five galaxies. Tourists are storming in, and it’s summer, it’s high season. Something’s wrong with that resort. And it just might be why the old girl brought us here. So we need to find out what.”  
They continue walking, Terafa chatting away, not minding that Martha’s completely lost him, or that the Doctor only nods absentmindedly.  
Soon enough, they step out of the canopy of the forest, and are standing once again on a long beach. This time, a huge building rises in front of them. With a fanfare, the Ebasan leads them towards it.  
“Welcome, madam and sir, to the Sunrise Resort!”  
The building is luxurious, Martha has to admit. Ridiculously so. Tefara shows them the main features of the hotel on their way to the suite.  
“And this is the mineral swimming pool”, informs them the Ebasan as they pass by what can only be described as an indoors, bright green lake.  
Martha turns to comment to the Doctor. But his eyes are staring at the bald pool boy across the lake, his eyebrows furrowed. She is perplexed. Then the pool boy raises his head, and instead of a mouth, he’s got tentacles.  
“Ood…”, mutters the Doctor.  
“What?”  
“How can the Ood be here?”  
Terafa finally finishes off listing the many benefits of the mineral swimming pool. With a nudge from the Doctor, telling him they’re tired, they make it to their room without further delay. As soon as the door has closed behind Terafa, the Doctor’s cheerful mask falls. He throws his coat on a chair, and starts pacing the room, running his hand through his hair.  
“Doctor, is everything all right?”  
“The Ood… How can the Ood be here? We’re half the universe away from Oodsphere…”  
“What’s the Ood?”, asks Martha.  
“They’re the Ood…”  
“Yes, but who are they?”  
“Telepathic creatures from the planet Oodsphere. Oodkind was used by the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire as slaves. But we…”, she notices how his voice breaks in the middle of his ranting, and she instantly knows the ‘we’ he just said refers to Donna and himself, “…we put an end to that, and the Ood returned to their planet, to live their lives in peace.”  
“What if we’re at an earlier point in time in their history?”  
“We aren’t. I can feel it. It has been well over a century in their time line since we were there. And besides, we’re still half the universe away. How did they get here? Martha, we need to investigate.”  
“Have you seen the size of this place? It’ll take forever.”  
“We’ll split up. Come on.”  
They’re out in the corridor again, and the Doctor nods to her, as he walks in one direction, and she goes another.

* * *

  
On and on he walks through the resort. He has a happy smile on his face, his chin is held high, his hands are buried in his pockets; the perfect image of the carefree tourist. An Ebasan brandishing the resort apparel soon notices him, and corners him. He asks if he would like some assistance. The Doctor flashes his naivest smile, and replies he’d love some, as he can’t decide what to do.  
The Ebasan’s eye gleams with delight, and he immediately leads the Doctor to the most expensive services the hotel has to offer; mud therapy, with the rarest muds, brought all the way from Orion, massages with Ebasa’s famed mineral water by expert octopi, the gourmet restaurant on the fifth floor. Or the gentleman would be interested in cricket, on their spectacular new field, just 300 denars, VAT included.  
Thankfully, an Ood passes them by at that moment, and the Doctor snatches the opportunity.  
“Ooh, who’s he?”, he asks the Ebasan, effectively cutting him off.  
“They are the Ood”, he replies.  
“They’re not from around these parts, are they?”, he asks casually.  
“No.”  
But before the Doctor can ask any more questions, he’s ranting again about this and that service. The Doctor notices his reluctance to talk about the Ood. He’s wasting his time with this one. So as the Ebasan leads him towards the spa, he sneaks off to an emergency exit. The Ebasan is too absorbed by his own endless babbling to notice the light thud of a door closing behind him.

* * *

  
Martha curses under her breath. She’s been lost-for half an hour now-in the maze of corridors that calls itself a seaside resort. All she’s seen so far is endless white washed corridors, with the occasional door leading deeper and deeper into the chaotic structure. She’s opened every single door she’s come across, either to find it locked, or leading to a facility of the resort that she’d love to use, but is irrelevant to her search.  
So when she comes across a door with the sing ‘Accounting Office’, she nearly squees in unadulterated delight. She bounds up to it, and turns the knob-only to find it locked.  
A string of oaths leaves her lips. But before she can do anything about the locked door, she hears footsteps coming down the corridor. Panic rises in her chest, as she looks around, desperately searching for a place to hide herself. She runs back up the corridor, away from the thudding of the footsteps. She passes one door. Locked. Then another. Also locked. She tries a third. The knob turns, the door creaks, and it opens. Without a second thought, she steps in, and gently closes the door behind her. She breathes in relief. Only then does she notice the Ebasan lightly snoring in the bed right across the room from her. _You have got to be kidding me_.  
She regulates her breathing. But instead of making less noise, she is making more. She tries holding her breath instead. After a moment of two she’s gulping air down her starved lungs. The Ebasan is stirring. And the footsteps can still be heard.  
“Oh, to hell with it”, she mutters, and once again steps into the corridor.  
She stays in the shadows. She stands still, fearing her boots will make a racket on the-is this marble?-floor.  
The footsteps stop. Martha dares to sneak a peek. An Ebasan is taking out of her pockets a set of keys, and enters an office two doors down from the Accounting Office. Martha sighs in relief.  
Slowly, carefully, she goes back to the Accounting Office. Glancing up and down the corridor one last time, she takes out of her jacket pocket a set of housebreaking equipment. The Doctor would not approve-not that he has any right to judge, with his sonic screwdriver. She only hopes to God that it’ll work on ebasan doors. This particular one, anyway.  
After a minute of tinkering about the lock, a satisfying click is heard, and the door swings noiselessly open. Martha smiles, pleased, and steps inside the office. She starts rummaging through folders and documents, immensely thankful for the TARDIS Translation Circuit.  
Remembering Donna’s brilliant idea to search the Personnel files in the ATMOS factory, she brings down the folders, and lays them out on the floor. She scans through them, until finally she reaches the Ood.  
_Oh, now_ this _is interesting_ , she thinks, smelling trouble a mile off.

* * *

  
The Doctor slips off outside. He starts wandering around, hands deep in his pockets, smiling at the occasional staff he encounters. There are no guests to speak of-as he imagined.  
The day is bright, not a cloud can be seen in the lilac sky-so why can he feel a shadow passing over him? It is no more than a second-but he knows it passed him all the same. He turns. But there is no one there.  
There it is again. A shadow, undefinable, shapeless, speedy and stealthy, disappearing in the trees. The same trees that Terafa found him and Martha wandering in. The same trees that chilled their blood in their veins.  
He follows it, hearts thumping madly in his chest.  
In the blink of an eye, the shadow disappears. The Doctor turns his head this way and that. Nothing. The eery silence of the forest once more grips his hearts with a vice. His breaths come ragged.  
And he sees it again. It is a mere trick of the light, but it is enough for the Doctor to follow it. It takes him deeper in the forest. He’s scared, but he doesn’t hesitate.  
But he loses it again. It is too quick-even for the Doctor.  
He runs a desperate hand through his hair. He turns around, frantically looking, not daring to blink. He sees something dark moving noiselessly through the thick barks of the trees. He follows it again. He doesn’t stop. And this time, this time he doesn’t let it out of his sight. He’s gaining on it. They reach a clearing. And once they are both standing in the open air, he comes to a sudden stop.  
Because before him stands Ood Sigma.  
And he has learnt-the hard way-that in this vast, endless, cold universe, there are no chance meetings. Not the second time round, anyway.  
“Greetings, Doctor.”  
“Ood Sigma”, he replies, weary of whatever it is that will follow.  
“Oodkind has traveled far and wide in search of its greatest friend.”  
He feels a pang in his chest. Oodkind’s greatest friend is Donna. Only, if she ever even sees one, she will burn up like paper in a fire.  
“Oodkind has finally found you”, says Ood Sigma, and puts him out of his misery.  
“You’ve certainly come a long way, if it was only to find me.”  
“Oodkind always remembers its friends, Doctor. And we have been searching the stars for you, to give you a message of hope in this darkest of hours.”  
He makes no attempt to deny Ood Sigma’s statement. He would only be trying to fool himself.  
“And what’s the message?”  
“Your song is ending, Doctor.”  
“Well, that’s not very hopeful, is it?”  
“Your song is ending. Our greatest friend shall return to us. The most faithful of the Children of Time shall be resurrected. Your song is ending.”  
He is tired of riddles. His very existence is a riddle, even to himself. But hearing in a riddle that his life-this life-is ending, is the cherry on top of the bloody cake.  
_It could mean Donna_ , a small, hopeful, powerful voice murmurs inside his hearts.  
He drowns it without so much as a second thought.  
He will not abide his grief with false hope. He will not allow treacherous thoughts like this to grow in his mind. Because, in the end, it will hurt. All the expectations that will once again be proven wrong, all the secret little nudges towards trying to find a solution for the Most Important Woman in the Universe, will make failure all the greater. And who will save him from himself _then_ , hmm? No more. He will have no more of it. This is his lot. Losing everything. Feeling empty. Then finding Donna. And losing her again.  
Time to break that cycle.  
“Farewell, Doctor, greatest of friends to Oodkind. We shall meet again, but not whilst this song lasts. Your song will end, and you shall be whole again.”  
And without another word, Ood Sigma shimmers into nothingness.  


* * *

It’s 24.7 minutes since Ood Sigma vanished into thin air. Yet the Doctor hasn’t left his spot in the clearing. He sank to the ground, and he still lies there. He cannot think of a good enough reason to get up and rejoin the living, breathing universe.  
The end-this end-is nearing. He always knew that, eventually, he would have to change. If he was lucky enough to regenerate, that is. But even that, simply changing, felt like dying. He would lose Donna that way. Ood Sigma said he would be whole again. He isn’t certain he wants to, if it means losing Donna even from his mind.  
He cannot find it in him to care about the creepy stillness of the forest. A dying man has no fear of death. Its cold hand is already upon him-what difference does it make if it’s even sooner than he expected?  
But the thought of Martha, so far away from home, finally gives him the strength he needs to get up. He slowly makes his way back at the resort.  
Once he arrives, he notices a racket coming from the reception. Frowning, he speeds up his pace. As he is nearing, he distinctly hears Martha’s voice shouting. He runs.  
They have caught her, and are trying to put her hands in cuffs.  
“Platinum Supernova Inspection”, he shouts over everyone’s voice, brandishing the psychic paper under the guards’ constricting Martha noses. “What’s going on here, withholding an inspector from performing her duties?”  
His brows are knit, and it’s evident from his expression that he is not in the mood for nonsense.  
Immediately, Martha is free, and running towards the Doctor, and a short little Ebasan, the Manager, the Doctor is informed by her name tag, comes forward to apologise profusely.  
“Platinum Supernova?”, Martha whispers.  
“The galactic equivalent of the five stars, play along.”  
“That’s what I’ve been doing all day, and look at us now…”  
“…but we found her snooping around in the Accounting Office”, the manager is complaining.  
“Well, if she was, she must have had a good reason”, replies the Doctor sternly. “Yeah, I did, I was checking all the… logistics were in order”, says Martha, slightly uncomfortable. “And look at what I found! Slavery! The Ood are not getting paid, not a single penny!”  
“Is that true?”, asks the Doctor, his face hardened.  
The manager sighs, resigned.  
“Yes.”  
“There better be a really good explanation about this, or this whole resort will be closed before you can cast a Patronus.”  
The situation is too serious for anyone to look perplexed.  
“They volunteered.”  
“What, they just showed up one day, asked to work, but ooooh, they couldn’t possibly accept your money?”  
“They wanted to do it!”, screams the manager. “The resort was having trouble, we needed the extra labour.”  
“So instead of doing the decent thing, you complied, and took them on with no wages”, says the Doctor, disgust dripping from his voice.  
“And would you rather we closed the whole thing down, and leave the rest of the staff unemployed?”  
“I’d rather you found other ways of increasing your profit than by using the Ood!”, he shouts. “The Ood go free _now_ ”, he adds more calmly.  
“The Ood have disappeared”, says a voice from the back. “They just… vanished. They’re gone.”  
“Can this be true?”, asks Martha.  
“Yes. I saw one do it earlier.”  
He turns to the manager, eyes dangerous and old.  
“You are lucky this time. But the next time, the resort shuts down, d’you hear me?”  
There is no room for argument. The manager nods, head bowed with shame.

* * *

Good things come from pretending to be Platinum Supernova Inspectors. Namely, free cocktails by the neon green Ebasan sea.  
Martha has stretched herself luxuriously on a chaise longue, idly spreading sunscreen on her arm. Now she can fully appreciate the lilac sky, and all the blue-skinned people sunbathing around her. She turns to look at the Doctor.  
“Ok, I think I’m ready for the lecture now.”  
He smiles.  
“Ebasa. 90% of the surface is taken up by sea. Land is just tiny little islands, scattered around the planet. The smaller ones have become seaside resorts. Ebasa boasts a total of 39067340 resorts, an astonishing million of which have been awarded Platinum Supernovas.”  
Martha makes an impressed noise. The Doctor takes the sunscreen from her hands. All she can do is stare, and try hard not to giggle, as the Doctor starts vigorously applying sunscreen. _Loads_ of sunscreen.  
“What?”, he asks, wounded. “I get awful sunburns in this alabaster skin.”  
This time, Martha snorts.  
“Stop it”, he says, perching his sunglasses higher on the bridge of his nose.  
Martha lies back, a smile on her face, enjoying the companionable silence. She doesn’t notice the Doctor’s face getting wistful.  
“I promised her I’d take her to the beach…”, he says.  
She looks at him, but he seems lost in thought as he stares at the crowd around them.  
But he feels her eyes, and turns to gaze at her only for a moment.  
“Donna, I… I promised her a day at the beach. Never got round to it, really. You know how life on the TARDIS can be, always too busy running.”  
Martha’s heart pounds in her chest. Because she realises that this, _this_ , is when he opens up and finally _speaks_.  
“It was always going to be the next trip. And then, Shan Shen happened…”  
And suddenly he’s telling her _everything_ ; how he met Donna after losing Rose, how he found her again after she decided to stop travelling in the TARDIS, of their adventures, of their time together. When he reaches the events after the Crucible, the hitch in his voice is evident, no matter how hard he tries to hide it.  
He speaks, and he speaks, and he speaks, and Martha lets him, not daring to interrupt him, fearing that the spell will break, and he will go back to suffering in silence. She listens to every memory, every tiny little joke, every heartfelt moment, and she realises, without the Doctor ever saying it, what exactly Donna Noble means to him. It took the Doctor months to understand. It takes Martha Jones less than half an hour.  He thinks he’s managed to hide his hearts from her, but she isn’t sure he’s fully aware of the extend of it all.  
Admitting that he’s taken Donna’s memories from her is where he finally chokes up. Guilt, sorrow, anger have formed a lump in his throat, and he’s finding it difficult to speak.  
“She can never remember, Martha. The Most Important Woman in the whole, wide universe, and she can never even know. And it’s all my fault… My fault…”  
She hesitates. The pain in his eyes, the creases of his forehead almost stop her. She doesn’t want to make it any harder than it already is. It’s probably just the universe playing a dirty trick on her. But what if it isn’t?  
“So that’s why she didn’t recognise me.”  
His eyes focus on her face with intense concentration. She feels so uncomfortable, she wants to look away.  
“What did you say?”  
“I’ve been bumping into her all the time. In the shops, in the street, in the Tube. Everywhere. I tried talking to her once, but she didn’t recognise me. Thought the time lines must be all mixed up, so I didn’t press it.”  
She suddenly feels his hands on her shoulders, as he turns her to fully face her. His jaw is trembling. His eyes are huge. His forehead creased.  
“Martha, listen to me. She cannot remember. Never. Not for one second. Because the mental barrier blocking the Time Lord consciousness inside her mind will break, and she will burn. Do you hear me? She will burn, she will die.”  
She considers talking to him, trying to change his mind, trying to make him see that maybe, _maybe_ there is a reason she’s seen Donna so often. But his grip is fierce. And so is the fear in his eyes.  
She nods. His hands slip off her shoulders, and he lies back on the chaise longue. But they remain silent. It is a tense silence. She wants to speak, to argue with him, to make him do something about it. But it’s obvious that he will not. He is terrified he will get it wrong. And perhaps he is right. So Martha stays silent, letting him be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, new format because I'm too lazy to do proper HTML.
> 
> Bad news, guys, tomorrow I'll be traveling back home, so there's only a small chance that I'll have time(and a decent internet connection) to post the next chapter...


	8. Chapter 8

Jack is humming to himself, as a cup of tea is brewing in front of him. He doesn’t even try to stifle the ginormous yawn that distorts the tune he’s humming. There is no one in Torchwood this early in the morning to see him anyway.  
Yawning once again, he takes his cuppa back to his office. But before he can actually sip it, he hears the elevator coming down. His money is on Ianto. Instead, he sees Doctor Martha Jones coming towards him, a frown marring her face. Even in this state of sleep deprivation(nope, nothing to do with a hangover), he manages to scoop her up in a crushing hug.  
“Long time, no see, Doctor Jones”, he says, smiling at her.  
She doesn’t immediately reply. She seems preoccupied.  
“Everything good?”, he asks.  
“Hmm? Oh, yes, yes, of course.”  
“Didn’t really expect you here today”, he says. “Thought you’d come next week.”  
“Well, Tom left for Africa a week early, so I thought I’d get some work out of the way.”  
“Oh, the gorgeous Tom Milligan!”, exclaims Jack.  
His eyes, inevitably, travel down to her left hand. A diamond is sparkling there once again.  
“You little minx! You never said you two were back together!”, he says, beaming.  
A smile appears on her face.  
“Yeah, we talked. Bit of a shock, time travel and all, but he’s handling it rather well, I must say.”  
“Aaaah, well, there goes my chance to woo the irresistible Doctor Milligan.”  
That earns him a hard slap on the shoulder.  
“So, why the long face, if all’s good with Tom?”  
She doesn’t reply immediately.  
“Nothing, I… I just saw someone.”  
Frowning, Jack waits for the rest of the sentence. There has to be more. When it doesn’t come, he can’t help but ask.  
“Who did you see? And why was it so strange, it worked you up so?”  
“It’s just… I’ve been seeing her all the time this past month… And now I saw her on the train. She even got off in Cardiff.”  
“Ok, so you just happen to live near, and both work in Cardiff. No big deal.”  
She doesn’t seem convinced.  
“Maybe you’re right. I’m being stupid.”  
“Cuppa? I hear it cures everything. Even stupidity.”  
The second slap on the arm is totally expected. It even brings a smile on his face.

* * *

  
The day is going by uneventfully, and once lunchtime comes, Jack steps into Martha’s office.  
“Pizza?”, he asks.  
She’s still frowning. She hasn’t stopped all day.  
“Actually, no”, she says, getting up from her chair, and putting on her coat. “I’m going out for lunch.”  
“What, on your own?”  
“No, I’m meeting up with a friend.”  
“Nice. Didn’t know you knew anyone in Cardiff, aside from us.”  
“I don’t.”  
He’s completely losing her.  
“So, where are you meeting…”  
“…her”, she supplies.  
“Where are you meeting her?”  
“Not a clue.”  
Now it’s his turn to frown.  
“Then how will you find her?”  
“Oh, I really don’t think that will be a problem, Jack.”  
She swings her handbag over her shoulder, and with a decisive step makes her way to the elevator.

* * *

  
_In the town where I was born_  
The Doctor is stretched on the jump seat of the TARDIS console room.  
_Lived a man who sailed to sea_  
His feet are propped up on the console, specs perched on the bridge of his nose.  
_And he told us of his life_  
He peers carefully at the device in his hand-the device he found on Lampsa.  
_In the land of submarines_  
His tongue is glued in the roof of his mouth in fierce concentration. Yet one foot is tapping along with the music, crossed over the other as it is.  
_So we sailed onto the sun_  
The silence of the empty TARDIS was unbearable. So, loud music and a bit of scientific tinkering is just what the doctor ordered. He snorts at his own pun.  
_Till we found the sea of green_  
He sonics the device-at the lowest setting, mind, he doesn’t want to destroy it before he’s had a chance to study it.  
_And we lived beneath the waves_  
_The Beatles are great_ , he thinks, as he finally manages to open the casing. _I love the Beatles. Maybe I should go and meet them._  
_In our yellow submarine_  
Carefully, reverently, he raises the lid, and gets his first glimpse of the device’s interior.  
_We all live in a yellow submarine_  
He marvels at the tiny, sophisticated clogs inside. Quantum circuits. Advanced.  
_Yellow submarine, yellow submarine_  
Very advanced. Too advanced, if he’s honest. His brow furrows. It can’t be. Can it?  
_We all live in a yellow submarine_  
No, of course it can’t. He’d have seen it before. And yet…  
_Yellow submarine, yellow submarine_  
He reaches into the depths of his pockets, and takes out minuscule tongs. With steady hands, he lowers them into the device.  
_And our friends are all aboard_  
He lifts the quantum circuit out of the casing. He nearly drops it to the floor.  
_Many more of them live next door_  
He’s staring at an extremely elaborate planetary computer. Fitted in the casing of a device the size of his palm.  
_And the band begins to play_  
_That’s not possible. How can this be possible?_ , he wonders.  
The song ends. He barely notices. When a meta punk-pop song he heard in a dingy bar in the less reputable part of the Cygnus Constellation, he doesn’t even blink. All he can do is stare deep into the device’s seemingly bottomless interior. Because it’s… _Well, it’s bigger on the inside_.  
Compression of more than four dimensions into a compact, three-dimensional body has been known only to one race across the entire universe: Time Lords. And even if he could ignore that, he could never ignore the fact that a whole solar system is what the little device that transmits any wave through time and space uninhibited is running on. Stellar mechanics. A Time Lord specialty, if ever there was one.  
But if this device really is Time Lord technology, why doesn’t he know about it? How can such a thing have escaped his notice? A device that needs so much power, it runs on a mechanism almost as complicated as that of a Type 40 TARDIS.  
Questions. Questions. So many questions. And even if he so much as tries to answer one of them, a million spring in its place. He’s missing something. He’s certain. The question is, what exactly?

* * *

  
Donna is cold. She grips her warm cup of coffee with a vice, only just managing not to crush it between her fists through knitted gloves. But no, she wanted her coffee out in the open air. It’s bloody January. What was she even thinking?  
Even as all of this races through her mind, she doesn’t even think of going back into the Costa she bought her coffee from, and resting there to drink the warm liquid. Then again, such a logical thought process wouldn’t stop there. It would raise questions. Why, for example, had she suddenly taken the train this morning and come down to Cardiff?  
But it feels so strangely _right_ , standing outside the Millennium Centre. Like so little does nowadays.  
She tries taking a sip of her coffee. It burns her tongue. Her urge to get her mouth as far away from the hot coffee makes her jump back, and she almost drops the cup. But a hand appears out of nowhere, steadying the paper cup in her palm.  
“Whoa, there you go! Nearly spilled the whole thing down your front.”  
A pretty young woman is standing in front of her, smiling almost knowingly. She’s ready to snap at her for telling her what to do with her own flipping coffee, but something stops her. Must be the fact that she just saved her from the embarrassing ride home in coffee-sodden clothes. Instead, she smiles back. The realisation startles her.  
“Thank you”, she says.  
“No problem”, replies the woman cheerfully.  
Donna thinks the woman will leave now. With a start, she realises that she doesn’t want her to.  
“So, are you from round these parts?”, asks the woman.  
“Nah, just came for the day.”  
Why is she replying?  
“Oh, so did I! Work?”  
“Not really. Fancied a trip. I live in London. Chiswick, to be exact.”  
“Oh, I’m from London too! I come here for work every once in a while. Listen, I was thinking of grabbing a bite. Fancy joining me? And I promise, nothing weird will happen, no hands on knees or anything.”  
She has a million scathing comebacks to throw the young woman’s way. But she doesn’t.  
“All right. But if I see any funny business, I’m leaving presto.”  
The woman laughs.  
“I’m Donna. Donna Noble. And you?”  
The woman smiles enigmatically. A small, throbbing pain starts in the back of Donna’s head. She doesn’t notice.  
“Martha Jones.”

* * *

  
Across the street, a tall man stands watching the two women walking away, talking and laughing. His gaze is cold and piercing behind black rimmed glasses. He adjusts the tie of his immaculate suit, and takes out of his pocket a strange device. He presses a few buttons, and replaces it in his pocket. He must be alert. The time is almost come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to base, after the boat trip from hell(boat was 4 hours late, I made it home at 5:30 in the morning). Thank goodness my boss is a reasonable human being and let me work from home.
> 
> I think I can stick to regular updates now-work and uni allowing, of course.
> 
> So, I'll not be sticking with the Martha/Mickey shtick. Sorry, guys, I was going to, but that was the wrongest wrong thing in the history of wrong things...


	9. Chapter 9

River storms into the TARDIS before him. As soon as he’s stepped inside, he snaps his fingers, and the doors close. His eyes are sad, and his face dejected.  
“Never thought fat could be so cute. Definitely never going on a diet again”, says River, smiling mischievously at him.  
But she sees his expression, and the smile slowly fades.  
“Oh, you didn’t know.”  
“That the Adipose breeding planet has been renamed DoctorDonna? No, I did not.”  
She’s at his side in an instant, and gently squeezes his shoulder. She smiles a sad smile.  
“You really do miss her, don’t you?”  
“You have no idea…”, he whispers.  
“Maybe I shouldn’t say that, but… Oh, to hell with it. Anyway, can’t keep any secrets from the hubby, can I?”, she winks playfully.  
He stares at her, a little scared. This woman in front of him scares him. She scares him with her foreknowledge. With her deep insight into his soul. With all this talk about marriage. He steals a glance at her left hand. A slim golden band shines on her fourth finger. A shiver runs down his spine. Will he be wearing one too in the future? Because he finds it hard, deep in his hearts, to believe that the hole that Donna left can ever be filled again. Maybe he will mend. Maybe he will heal. The possibility hurts a little.  
“All will be well. I promise you. Have faith.”  
Her voice is soft, reassuring. Will it, though? He is reminded of what Donna said to him after Jenny died. He can remember her. He can keep her in his mind and in his hearts. And he can go on. He must.  
“You’re very calm about all of this”, he cannot help but comment.  
She laughs.  
“You forget, sweetie. I know where you’re going. And I know where I’m coming from. And I’ve got nothing to be jealous of.”  
She turns to the console. She hesitates. The Doctor sets them in the Vortex, and notices that River drinks in every little movement he makes, every lever he turns. He smiles a little, feeling more relaxed. This whole ‘moving in opposite directions’ can be confusing.  
“So, where d’you want me to drop you off?”  
“Lunar University, 30th April 5086.”  
They take off. It’s a short ride, and it’s not long before they hug goodbye.  
“See you around, sweetie! And no peeking!”  
Confusion at nearly everything River says should be a given by this time. But he can’t help but wonder… What will happen to him?  
She walks out, snaps her fingers, and the last thing the Doctor catches is her mischievous smile. His hearts tighten as he recalls her future.  
He’s all alone in the TARDIS again, and the silence is deafening. He flips the speakers’ switch. He lets the old girl decide on the music.  
_Ah, look at all the lonely people_  
Of course it would be Eleanor Rigby. Of course. Because the TARDIS has suddenly developed a perverse fixation on reminding him of Donna. As if he needs any help. He slams the switch, effectively turning off the music. The old girl whirs in protest. He ignores it. He walks towards the library _not_ thinking of her. With his brilliant mind, he manages to block all images of her melancholy every time the song came on. Or how he found her crying on her bedroom floor after the library. He doesn’t think on how he sled down the wall to sit next to her. He can’t recall how his arms circled her shoulders. He doesn’t think of how she turned her face to his chest, sobbing a little. Nor does he think on how his cheek rested on the crown of her head, as she cried. He doesn’t think of how the sobs subsided, and she took deep, calming breaths, before starting to talk. And he most definitely doesn’t think of the words she uttered, her voice strained from all the crying.  
“All they ever told me to want… All of it… Find a man, no matter if… if you’ve nothing in common… get married… have a couple of kids… never mind about your dreams, your life… do as you’re expected to do… Always… Always… You’re not special… Have an average life… You’re nothing remarkable, have an unremarkable life… Always, _always_ feeling like Eleanor Rigby…”  
He doesn’t even think on what he replied.  
“Oh, Donna Noble, you are brilliant. You are absolutely magnificent. With or without a family. With or without a man. I promise you that. And your life is astonishing. Just as it is. Nothing more, nothing less.”  
He doesn’t remember how she pressed closer to his chest, or how her tears soaked his jacket, or the slight shake of her head in disbelief to his words.  
No, he doesn’t think of anything like that. He’s almost convinced himself he doesn’t even remember it. Not anymore.  
The blood chills in his veins. Because there will come a time when all of this won’t even be a memory anymore. It’ll just be another story, belonging to another man, stored in the deepest confines of his mind, till it slowly fades into nothingness. The inevitability of forgetfulness. Even for a Time Lord.  
_Life goes on_ , he mutters to himself, his eyes stinging. _Life goes on._

* * *

  
Donna looks up from her book, and notices Martha waving at her through the window of the tea shop before stepping in from the cold. She dog-ears the page she’s on, and closes it, laying it aside. The cover is black, with a pair of dice throwing a shadow on the title. ‘Partners in Crime’, by Agatha Christie, it reads. A headache starts throbbing in the back of Donna’s head as she hugs Martha, but she barely notices.  
It’s been nearly two months since the girl approached her outside the Millennium Centre in Cardiff, yet they’ve become such good friends, it’s as if they’ve known each other their whole lives. Nerys is always trying to get her to come to the Girl’s Night down at the pub, but Donna usually has plans with Martha and her fancy man, Tom. It’s not like her, making almost instantly friends, without really trying. It’s not like her to have a deep, true understanding with people she knows so little. It’s not like her to trust strangers she meets on the street. But it feels so _right_ , like that’s how she should be. Smiling comes naturally to her whenever she’s with the couple. True, her headaches get immeasurably worse at times, so much so that she thinks her head will burst open, but she doesn’t care. Those are the moments that she feels like herself, and happiness seems once again possible. If someone asks her what they talk about, she’s not able to say exactly. Everything, and nothing. But the long lost feeling of contentment returns, and that’s all that matters. Donna feels free to be herself. She has realised that these 35 years she’s been someone else. Strange, how it can take too long to notice such things.  
Martha plonks herself on the plush armchair across from her, and smiles a bright smile.  
“Please tell me your day has been a bit less mad than mine has”, she says, relaxing in her chair.  
“Ah, you can count on that, sunshine”, replies Donna.  
But a sharp pain in her head makes her draw a shuddering breath, and absentmindedly rub her temple. Martha watches her intently. The headache is back, she realises. Her insides twist a little. Maybe she should’ve stayed away, as the Doctor had told her to do. And yet… And yet…  
She befriended Donna because of how sad and lost she looked. But the friendship that sprang between them has taken her by surprise. She truly cares for her now. And no matter what the Doctor says, she sees Donna struggling every single day to readjust to a life that she doesn’t know she had left for a whole year, and in which she never really fit. And then there are all those strange little fixations she gets, the things that slip from the Doctor’s mental barriers, and come running out her mouth, before she shakes her head, and laughs at the nonsense she’s saying. And the headaches. The constant, never ending headaches at anything remotely connected to the Doctor, or their time together.  
“So, have you been settling in all right at the new place?”, she asks Donna once she’s placed her order to the waitress.  
“Yeah, it’s ok”, says Donna, a little smile forming on her lips. “Money’s better, so I might be able to afford my own place again soon, and that is definitely a plus. Mind you, Mum’s not been half as bad lately as she used to be.”  
“Mothers are better when they live in a different house, I always say.”  
Donna snorts with laughter.  
“Oh, you’ve got that right.”  
“Plus, you’ll be able to bring a bloke round, if you so fancy”, says Martha, winking cheekily at her.  
“Nah, I’m good as I am, thanks. I can’t really say I’m in the mood for dating.”  
“Good for you, Donna. I like strong, modern, independent women such as you.”  
Donna snorts derisively this time. She points at herself.  
“Single 35-year-old still living with her mother and grandfather. Not exactly what I’d call independence.”  
“Stop putting yourself down, you’re so much more cool than you realise.”  
“Nah, you’re just too nice.”  
_Oh, if only you knew…_  
“So, reading anything interesting?”, Martha changes the subject, realising she’s making Donna’s headache worse.  
Instead of answering, Donna pushes her paperback across the table, next to Martha’s cup of tea that arrives at that moment.  
Martha’s mouth falls open as she takes in the cover, the title, and author. She is paralysed for a tiny instant.  
“Any good?”, she finally manages to ask.  
Donna shrugs.  
“I get a horrible headache while I’m reading it, you know, but it must be good if I go on instead of chucking it in the bin…”  
Martha’s cautiously neutral face slips for a moment.  
“You all right?”, Donna asks, noticing the change. “‘Course I am”, Martha smiles back.  
Donna doesn’t look exactly convinced, but she lets it pass. Martha will never stop being astounded at her deep understanding of human nature, and knowing when to drop it instead of pressing it and becoming insensitive.  
But, lost as she is in the paperback in her hands, Martha doesn’t notice the song that comes on through all the noise in the tea shop.  
_Ah, look at all the lonely people_  
But once she looks back up at Donna across the table, she’s gobsmacked.  
Because silent tears are falling slowly down Donna’s cheeks.  
“Donna… Is anything the matter?”, she asks gently.  
Donna’s gaze turns to her.  
“‘Course not, why would it be?”, she asks.  
Martha’s eyes are fixed on her cheeks. She raises a hand, and touches the point Martha’s staring at. She is surprised by the wetness that meets her fingertips.  
“Must be getting daft in my old age…”, she mumbles, as she searches for a tissue inside her bag.  
As she rummages through her bag, Martha’s mind is made up. She discreetly puts the paperback in her own bag, hoping Donna won’t notice it’s missing till after they’ve gone. And as Donna’s wiping her eyes, she picks up her cup to sip on her hot tea. It burns her tongue, and the cup flies out of her hand, crashing on the floor in large chunks of sharp, white porcelain.  
“Oh, I’m so sorry, I got burnt”, she mumbles to Donna.  
But Donna’s already picking up the pieces from the floor, and Martha’s not really trying to stop her. As the waitress comes with a tea towel to mop up the mess, Donna lets a little curse escape her lips.  
“You all right?”, asks Martha worried.  
“Yeah, just split my finger with one of the shards.”  
Martha goes on full doctor mode.  
“Let me have a look.”  
She takes out a clean tissue, wipes the blood, and then binds the wound with a bandage from the stash she always keeps in her bag.  
“There you are”, she smiles at Donna.  
“Cheers.”  
Busy as Donna is examining Martha’s handiwork with the bandage, she doesn’t notice that Martha slips the bloodstained tissue carefully into her bag. Instead, she orders her friend another cup of tea, and goes on chatting the afternoon away, as if that stupid cup never shattered in the first place.


	10. Chapter 10

He shouldn’t be roaming around Betelgeuse. Not in the middle of an interstellar war, anyway. He knowns that better than anyone. The truth of it is, he is too lonely. The TARDIS is too silent, and his thoughts too loud. So what better way to drown them out than to materialise right in the middle of a huge and bloody war? Plenty of noise, plenty of destruction to occupy his mind.  
If his older self, the one that travelled with Donna, had seen him in the midst of this terrible war, he’d have been sick with shame and revolt. He’s too desperate to care or notice.  
He strolls down the corridor towards the bridge of the spaceship he’s materialised in with his hands in his pockets, completely detached from the explosions happening outside the window. He’ll find something or other to help with. That’s what he tells himself. He doesn’t even know if he’s landed on a Betelgeusian ship, or a Sirian.  
The Republic of Sirius is having the upper hand at the moment, that much is clear. But the Doctor knows that, give it a couple of years, and Betelgeuse will be imposing taxes on Sirius for its defeat.  
He has to reach the Bridge to see any member of the crew. There they all are, with solemn faces, and awaiting their captain’s orders. The Doctor takes one step into the room, and is immediately greeted by a gun.  
“Whoa there, easy!”, he exclaims, raising his hands to show he’s unarmed, looking at the gun with distaste.  
But the dark, middle aged man that’s wielding the gun has all three eyes fixed on him, and they are filled with hatred.  
“Who the hell are you, and how did you get in here?”, he snarls at the Doctor.  
An eery silence has fallen into the bridge, and every triplet of eyes is intently fixed on him. He swallows nervously. Perhaps he ought to have thought this through… But it’s too late for second thoughts now.  
A woman appears at the man’s shoulder, face collected, eyes burning bright. Her green uniform tells him he’s on a Betelgeusian ship.  
“Private Smir…”, she says, the warning to keep his cool and not adorn the pristine wall behind the Doctor with the interior of his head clear.  
Private Smir struggles. But he heeds the woman’s warning. He closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath. The Doctor turns his eyes to the woman’s shoulder. A commander’s star shines there.  
“Now explain; who are you, and how did you get onto the ship?”, Private Smir asks again.  
“I’m the Doctor”, he replies slowly, frowning. “My spaceship landed on your ship. I come in peace.”  
Private Smir bares his teeth in aggression, but moves not a muscle.  
“The Doctor?”, asks the commander. “But how can that be? I’ve read about you. You’re a Time Lord. How can you be a Time Lord? They all died out during the Last Great Time War.”  
“They did.” He has no more emotion to choke up on. His face merely hardens. It’s been too long. He’s lost too much. “But I survived.”  
“Why are you here?”, she asks.  
He shrugs.  
“Wandering round the Universe… Chance.”  
“I don’t believe in chance. Not after fighting in this war.”  
“Then perhaps you are too wise for your youth.”  
“Enough with the bloody riddles…”, snarls Private Smir. “I say we chuck him out.”  
“Private Smir, collect yourself, and bear in mind your position in my crew”, comes the harsh reply of the commander. “Betelgeuse had an invaluable ally in the Time Lords, with ancient ties of friendship binding us with our Gallifreyan brothers. The least we can do is give this man the benefit of the doubt. Lower your weapon, Private.”  
“But…”  
“Lower your weapon.”  
The authority in her voice as she enunciates the command is such, that the private dares brook no further opposition. He lowers his weapon reluctantly.  
The commander nods, relieved.  
“I am Commander Sirna Ghan, this is Private Sancto Smir. Welcome aboard the SS Reda, Doctor.”  
“Why, thank you very much, Commander Sirna Ghan”, he replies flashing a grin. “How can I be of service?”  
She eyes him through slitted lids.  
“We’ll see about that. We are a rescue mission, Doctor. One of our Bomb Disposal ships went AWOL yesterday. So we’re travelling to the heart the Sirian fleet, where we last had a signal of her, to see what’s going on, and to bring her home. We can’t afford to lose another, not with the Sirians ready to bomb us into oblivion…”  
“Ooooh, sounds exciting! So no actual fighting… Better that way, I always find. Don’t you agree?”  
“What, missing out on all the fun? No, battle is where the real thing’s going on… But climbing the ladder, you have to take the trash out before you’re allowed in the kitchen”, she says bitterly, gazing out of the window with pure envy at the battle going on a few miles away.  
The Doctor is speechless. Sirna, so young, yet so… ruthlessly ambitious. What has he set himself up for? He shakes himself out of his stupor, and proceeds with meeting the rest of the crew, disregarding Sirna’s ominous words. Yet he doesn’t miss Private Smir gripping violently the commander by the forearm, and dangerously whispering into her ear.  
“Why did you trust him? We know _nothing_ about this Time Lord… He could be working for…”  
“Private Smir, let me remind you that you are manhandling your commander”, she snarls his way.  
He releases her, as if he just touched hot metal.  
“Good. Now, you will kindly _never_ interfere with the way I choose to command this ship, is that _perfectly_ clear?”  
“Yes, ma’am”, Smir says dangerously, and leaves the room.  
Sirna notices the Doctor watching her, a frown marring his face. Once he’s done with the pleasantries, he joins her by the door of the Bridge.  
“Take no note of Sancto…”, she says. “He has too much anger, too much bitterness… Useful in battle, but in a rescue mission a hot head is never a good idea…”  
“What happened?”  
“Two years ago, he lost his husband and his sister in a raid. Oh, what he wouldn’t give to see Sirius explode into a billion tiny pieces, and all Sirians obliterated from the entire Universe…”  
“And you?”, asks the Doctor, his eyes burning holes into her face.  
She shrugs.  
“I just want to win the war. And I want to be a general before I do. Once in a lifetime opportunity, this…”  
“I see…”, he says, disgust filling him to the brim.  
“They should’ve left Sancto join active service, let him fight battles. His thirst for revenge would’ve been such an asset in battle… But he’s middle-aged. He was deemed not fit for service. So here he is…”  
The Doctor doesn’t reply. Maybe she expects him to praise her strategic brilliance. Maybe she expects him to go on about tactics. He doesn’t. He can’t. He feels nauseated.  
Yet he doesn’t leave. He swallows his own bad feelings for the whole lot of them-soldiers!-and focuses on the task at hand. Betelgeusians missing. Lives that matter. He stays to help them.

* * *

  
Hours of travelling through the stars pass. The speed is greater than the speed of light, but still, it isn’t the TARDIS. The Doctor’s patience is being tested. He’s sagged to the floor, passing his time by turning the lights of the room he’s been given off and on again with the sonic screwdriver. He’s doing it for the millionth time, when the lights go out permanently, and not even the sonic can turn them back on.  
 _Stealth mode_ , he realises.  
“All crew members to the bridge, I repeat, all crew members to the Bridge”, Sirna’s voice is just about heard from the speakers.  
He jumps up to his feet, and follows the dim cyan floor lights to the Bridge.  
“We’re entering in the midst of a Sirian fleet”, she informs in a calm and collected voice. “The party’s starting. I want absolute silence-I’ve turned the engine down, so as to make as little noise as possible. I need all of you on monitors, scanning the area for our ship. One breath louder than a whisper, and I will personally see you persecuted out of the Army, is that perfectly clear?”  
A half-hearted, scared, whispered ‘Aye, aye, ma’am’ echoes among the soldiers, and the commander is satisfied.  
“Very well. Get to work. Doctor, with me”, she gestures to him to join her by the steering terminal.  
He stands beside her, holding his breath. He looks out the window, into the vastness of space. They are surrounded by at least a hundred fully loaded Sirian battle ships.  
“My, my…”, he mutters.  
“Exactly. We need to locate our ship as quick as possible. We can’t remain unseen for long. And Sirius will be rising in a few hours…”  
“Blimey…”  
He strains his eyes, searching. He presses his nose to the window, trying hard to see what not even the best sensors can detect. He stays like this, his breath steaming up the glass, for nearly two hours, as the rescue ship slowly moves noiselessly through the enemy fleet. Every single heart on the Bridge is beating faster than what’s strictly healthy. But there is no choice, if they want to get out of there unscathed. Suddenly a voice is heard.  
“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!”, it says, louder than it should.  
The commander shushes the Betelgeusian that shouted, but runs towards his monitor, the Doctor closely following, and bends to peer into the screen.  
“Well?”, she demands.  
“There”, says the private that called her, and points at the monitor.  
Sure enough, a ship, transmitting different signals to every other surrounding it, is steadily bleeping onto the screen.  
“Oh, yes, yes!”, the Doctor very nearly shouts.  
“Smir, lock onto this position. Quietly, mind you! And make sure the ship’s towed properly to ours.”  
Everyone sets to work without questions or delays. Even Private Smir solemnly obeys the orders of the commander. Soon enough, the ship is towed to them.  
“Good. Now let’s bugger off”, says Sirna.  
“What an excellent idea!”, the Doctor exclaims excitedly.  
But the engines, working twice as hard in order to move both ships, are making a racket. Within moments, the entirety of the Sirian fleet is aware of them.  
“They’ve seen us”, mutters the Doctor.  
“Quickly! Get us out of here!”, shouts Commander Ghan to her crew. They scramble to obey, but they are not fast enough. Half the fleet is chasing them.  
“Sirna, let me drive… Let me commandeer the ship, I can lead you to safety…”, the Doctor pleads.  
She looks at him as if seeing him for the first time. She fails to react. She just stares and stares and stares.  
“Sirna, please, listen to me. I can do it. I can get you out of here, if you only let me…”  
“You will put our lives into this man’s mercy?”, Sancto demands to know. “You will allow him to steer a Betelgeusian ship? You know nothing about him. What if he surrenders? What if he lets the Sirians catch us?”  
“No, Sirna, listen to me…”  
“I say we drop some nukes. Take down all the damn fleet. We’ve come all this way. Let’s spread a bit of mayhem.” Private Smir is smiling, a slow, sick smile. “We can’t escape them now. Let’s light these bastards up, eh?”  
The commander slowly turns to look as Sancto, with his sick smile still plastered on his face. The rest of the room is holding it’s breath.  
“No, NO, Sirna, listen…”  
“Hush…”, she says, raising a hand to shut him up.  
Her face is hard, as if it has been chiselled out of stone. She looks out the window, with the vastness of space in front of them. But she can feel the Sirians hot at her heels…  
“NO, NO, LISTEN TO ME-“  
“This is not your war, Doctor”, she says, her voice calm and authoritative. “Private Smir, engage the nuclear warheads.”  
“Sancto, no, listen to me, don’t you dare-“  
“Aye, aye, ma’am!”, cries Private Smir, hurrying to his terminal to do as he was told.  
The Doctor is panicking. _IDIOTS!_ He’s surrounded by idiots. Dangerous idiots, at that. He ruffles his hair frantically, looking around, searching. He notices a big, red button. He dives towards it, but Sirna has anticipated his move, and is trying to stop him. He cannot reach it, with Sirna’s strong body holding him back. He wriggles and writhes, to no effect.  
“Nuclear warheads engaged, Commander”, comes Smir’s gloating voice.  
“No, NO!”  
They are dead. All dead. Sirians and Betelgeusians alike. All this journey, all this effort to rescue their comrades up in smoke. And for what? The ambition of a commander, who wishes to climb the ladder three steps at a time, and if that means balancing on heaps of dead bodies, then so be it.  
It’s so easy to just sag to the floor, and let Sirna blow up the Sirian fleet. But he sees red. He will not allow this. He will not see Sirna’s ambition being gratified-not when the cost is so many lives. He feels disgusted by her. He wants to shrink back into himself, so as to avoid contact with her. She repulses him. No. Enough. Rassilon, he will stop this twisted bid for power. If someone has to die today, if someone has to pay whatever price this war asks for, then it will be those who would trample on lives on a whim.  
He shoves his hand into his pocket. He fumbles for a moment. Come on! He finds the sonic, whips it out, and points it to the button.  
“NO, NO, YOU FOOL!”, shouts the commander.  
Too late. The engines stop suddenly. The ships are suspended in the void. A siren starts howling in their ears.  
“YOU’VE DOOMED US!”, screams Sirna. “DOOMED, DOOMED!”  
The Doctor disentangles himself from her, and looks at her tear stricken face with utter contempt. He moves to the door, ignoring the shouts that he’s doomed them all, that he’s the reason the Sirians will get their hands on them, the reason they will be tortured and killed by Sirian hands. He ignores it all.  
“You brought this upon yourself”, he says to Commander Ghan, before locking every single one of them into the Bridge.  
Sirian troops have disembarked on the ship. He can hear their boots thundering towards him. He moves to meet them, face hard and relentless.  
“Halt!”, calls a Sirian trooper as he finally meets their forces. “Stand still!”  
He disregards him. He moves on as several guns are pointed at him.  
“All the Betelgeusian crew are on the Bridge. They are yours to do as you please with. Maybe they know a thing or two about, say, Betelgeusian raids to Sirius. Worth a try getting them to talk before doing them in.”  
He walks on, hands deep in the pockets of his trench coat. As he reaches the TARDIS, he raises a hand and snaps his fingers. The doors open. He steps in, and with another snap, the doors close once more.  
A moment later, the blue box has disappeared from the SS Reda.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooooh, dark, unstoppable Doctor... I looooove writing him, I'll admit that.
> 
> Anyway, buckle your seatbelts, mates, the ride begins next chapter... ;)


	11. Chapter 11

Jack is looking at her as if she’s sprang a second head. Not that Jack isn’t familiar with two-headed species, chances are he’s been with someone two-headed. None the less, that’s how he’s looking at her.  
“Why would you do that when he told you it was dangerous?”  
 _Here we go_ , Martha thinks. She rubs her hands together. She’s freezing, but asking for Jack’s help in such a delicate matter was bound to end up in a full-blown argument, so she asked him to join him outside the Millennium Centre for a little privacy from the rest of the Torchwood team.   
“Forget about the Doctor, what about Donna? She could’ve died, Martha! Maybe she will, if you go on playing friends with her!”  
“I know, Jack, I’m not an idiot! I tested the waters before plunging in, for God’s sake!”  
That seems to calm him down a bit. She goes on.  
“I got her talking. Everything seemed to be getting along nicely. I’m a flipping doctor, I’d know if something went wrong! Brain damage isn’t exactly easy to hide. Besides, _I_ couldn’t trigger her memory, the Doctor’s barriers are too strong for that. A Dalek maybe could, or the Doctor himself, but not me. And it’s been two months now, and nothing’s bloody happened, so stop bossing me around!”  
That shuts him up enough to make him feel a little sheepish. But he’s still avoiding her gaze.  
“She’s rubbing off on you… All that swearing… That’s not like you at all…”  
She smiles at that. Yes, she’s enjoying being friends with Donna massively. She only wishes she could remember… Be her true self again, and not the shadow of the woman she remembers traveling with the Doctor.  
“If there was a way to save her, wouldn’t the Doctor have found it?”, Jack interrupts her thoughts.  
“No, Jack, because he’s being a git. He’s just wallowing in misery, too scared to take the risk and lose her all over again.”  
“Damn right he’s scared, she might die!”  
“But what if we can help her, Jack?”  
She looks up at him with huge, hopeful eyes. Jack’s resolve slackens.  
“Martha Jones, you better know what the hell you’re doing, because this is dangerous. Dangerous enough to scare the Doctor.”  
She squeezes his arm, and smiles warmly at him.  
“Just some tests, Jack, that is all. I promise.”  
She reaches inside her handbag, and pulls out an evidence bag, containing a bloodstained tissue. He takes it from her hand, and carefully places it in the inside pocket of his jacket.  
“Ok. Tests, I can do.”  
“Thank you, Captain.”  
“Spare me the flattery, you little British manipulator.”  
Before Martha has a chance to swat his arm, a whooshing sound fills the chilly air. The air shimmers in front of them, and a sudden blueness appears. A blueness that makes them both smile. The blueness is a police box back from the sixties. The door creaks open.  
The Doctor’s head pops out, an eyebrow raised in question. But once he spots Martha and Jack, he smiles a great, big grin that creases the corners of his eyes.  
Martha runs into his arms, and they hug fiercely.  
“Joining us today, are you, Captain?”, asks the Doctor, as he shakes Jack’s hand.  
“Not today, Doc, no. Thanks for asking, though.”  
“Suit yourself. Come on, Martha.”  
“Hold on a minute, will you? I want you to meet someone!”  
The Doctor’s brow furrows in confusion.  
“Meet someone…?”  
Then he notices a tall, strong young man walking their way. Martha beams at him, and runs over to take him by the hand and formally present him to the Doctor.  
“This is Tom Milligan, my fiance”, she says, a radiant smile on her face. “And this is the Doctor.”  
“Oh, Tom, it’s great to finally meet you!”, says the Doctor, shaking the man’s hand with the enthusiasm of an overeager puppy.  
“You too, Doctor. I’ve heard loads about you.”  
Tom is more reserved than the Doctor would’ve probably liked. But he can see him shifting uncomfortably, and he wonders if he’s not the reason Tom seems a little less than pleased with the whole situation.  
“You coming?”, asks the Doctor, nodding in the direction of the TARDIS. “See all the wonders Martha’s been telling you about?”  
He winks at her.  
“No, thanks, I’m good. The airplane is as far as I go, I think I’ll skip the time machine, if that’s all right.”  
The Doctor smiles.  
“Allons-y?”, he asks Martha.  
“Allons-y!”, she replies.  
They wave goodbye at Tom and Jack, and step into the TARDIS. In a moment, the whooshing of take-off sounds, and the box fades into nothingness.  
Tom and Jack stand side by side for a moment.  
“You ok?”, asks Jack.  
“Yeah”, replies Tom, exhaling a shuddering breath.  
“Double scotch?”, asks Jack.  
“Well, I thought I’d go back to Torchwood with you, see if you need any help, since Martha’s gone…”  
“She put you into this whole ‘Bring Donna Noble back’ business, didn’t she?”, Jack deadpans.  
“Yup, she did.”  
Jack sighs.  
“At least I’ll have a doctor to explain the results to me.” He takes in Tom’s slightly dishevelled hair, complimenting jacket, and tight jeans. “A gorgeous doctor, at that.”  
Tom blushes furiously. He follows Jack into Torchwood anyway. Martha will have his head if he doesn’t.

* * *

  
“And _that_ ”, says Martha, trying to wipe orange space goo, that has the disconcerting texture of bogies, out of her eyes, “is one item on the long list of why I stopped traveling with you on a regular basis.”  
The Doctor steps into the TARDIS, covered in the same slimy stuff, a look of pure disgust and horror on his face.  
“It _can_ get a bit messy, I’ll admit that.”  
“ _Messy_? I’m going for a day-long shower, hoping this… This-actually, forget it, I don’t want to know what this really is-comes off.”  
He wisely holds his tongue. Because, in all honesty, he’d rather not know what he’s covered in, too.  
Martha tries lifting her handbag from the jump seat without getting any goo on it. She fails. Then, she tries lifting it with getting the minimum amount of goo on it. The handbag ends up on the floor, spilling out its contents. She curses colourfully. The Doctor crouches next to her, and reaches out to help her put her things back in her bag. He notices a paperback, now covered in the same orange goo that graces their persons. She makes to grab it, but he’s too quick for her. He turns it over, and stares at the cover.  
It shows a pair of white dice against a black background, casting a shadow on the title: ‘Partners in Crime’, by Agatha Christie.  
His jaw slackens and drops. Martha has gone completely still. His eyes snap up to her.  
“Where did you get this?”  
She blinks nervously.  
“Martha, where did you get this?”, he repeats, forcefully.  
She shrugs.  
“Picked it up in a bookstore. I’m reading it. It’s the second one in the ‘Tommy and Tuppence’ series.”  
He looks at the book as if it holds the answer to the mystery of life itself.  
“I didn’t… I didn’t know she had…”, he whispers.  
Martha doesn’t need him to finish that sentence. She knows exactly how it ends.  
 _There’s always something worth living for, Martha_ , he’d said to her, after Jenny died. She wonders now whether he might have actually already found something worth living for. She also wonders whether he realised at the time. Whether he’s realised it now. And if he hasn’t lost it.  
She touches his shoulder, as she rises from the floor.  
“I’m gonna take a soak. I’d rather Tom didn’t see me in this mess…”, she says quietly, and goes to her old room to take a shower.  
Once she comes back, she finds the Doctor all cleaned up, with a fresh suit on, his hair still slightly damp from his own bath. He leans on the console with one hand, the other gripping the book with a vice.  
“So, ready to go home?”, he asks, as she reaches his side.  
“Υes, please!”  
He pulls a lever, and the TARDIS takes off. In a few moments, they’ve landed. Martha swings her bag over her shoulder, and stretches her hand towards the book, which is still in the Doctor’s hand. He draws it away from her.  
“I need to keep this… For my archive…”, he says, nodding, in a vague attempt to make his reasoning more plausible.  
Martha nods in pretend understanding. She hugs him, maybe a little tighter than she should. But the need for comfort radiates off him like palpable light, and she cannot bring herself to be stern.  
“Take care, Doctor.”  
“I will”, he replies, nodding.  
She steps out of the TARDIS, and straight into Tom’s arms. The Doctor takes off without another word.

* * *

  
Inside the library, the lights are dim. A single floor lamp is on, under which the Doctor has stretched himself luxuriously on a sofa. Charlie, the grumpada, is sleeping peacefully beside him. The place smells of old leather and a kind of cedar wood only found on Gallifrey. The TARDIS library has always been his favourite place. He pretends this isn’t the sofa he and Donna used to sit on to read, take their tea, or just lie silent on after a trying day.  
No. Instead, he’s absorbed by the book he’s reading. He’s almost finished it in one sitting. And he cannot understand how in the name of Rassilon he didn’t know about it. ‘Partners in Crime’, by Agatha Christie…  
The universe is either laughing at his expense, or… Or all that’s happened in these last few months, in the months Donna’s gone from the TARDIS and his life, has been more than mere coincidence. Seeing Donna in Brighton, Pompeii, Ood Sigma, the Adipose breeding planet renamed DoctorDonna… He trembles at the very thought. But he can no longer ignore it. He must find out what’s up.  
He throws the book on the other end of the sofa, takes off his specs, and rises. He starts pacing between the bookcases, hands deep in his trouser pockets, _thinking_ with all his might. First, he must read. And since there is nothing that will help him in the library he’s currently standing in, he must look for information elsewhere.  
“Allons-y”, he mutters, and makes his way to the console room.  
Time to find out what’s really going on.


	12. Chapter 12

Having finally finished her shift, Donna trudges down the street. The only thing keeping her going is the sheer desire to reach a kettle and a sofa. At least the spring afternoon chill brings colour back to her cheeks, and willingness to put one foot in front of the other to her numb mind.  
It’s been a hard day. Her headache has been relentless, and the disconcerting feeling of complete and utter meaninglessness has returned full force. She feels like hiding under her duvet for a week or two, till the feeling, the _emptiness_ , in her head and in her chest goes away. Only it can’t. She’s tried it before. It can ebb away briefly, when she’s with Martha, or when she gets her weird fixations, but it can’t be held at bay for more than a few hours.  
And besides, she needs to go to work. She needs the money. She needs her own flat. Then, slowly, maybe she can make sense of her life again. Maybe she can find real purpose.  
Lost as she is in her own thoughts, she doesn’t notice the tall man in the impeccable suit and the black rimmed glasses following her down the Chiswick high street. She’s completely oblivious to anything happening around her. Till she passes a florist.  
She stops, and looks at the little shop. It’s a bit dingy, and the flowers look like they’ve seen better days. She’s ready to move on, when her eye catches a bunch of blue flowers.  
Forget-me-nots.  
She can’t spare the money for flipping flowers. They’re already half dead, and, judging by the look of them, they’ll barely make it the walk back home. And besides, since when has she been into flowers?  
Yet, she finds herself walking up to the florist, requesting the little bouquet, paying for it, and getting back out on the street. The rest of the way home, she holds the flowers close to her chest, and all she can think of is their name: _forget me not, forget me not, forget me not…_  
Flowers are meant to make you happy. Well, the blue little petals make Donna immeasurably sad. The worst thing is, she can’t understand why. She feels so lost, so confused, so sad, and she doesn’t know what for. A single tear escapes the corner of her eye, and runs down her cheek. She wipes it hastily, trying to understand what’s going on in her queer head, crying like that in the middle of the street over a bunch of flowers. Another thing that doesn’t quite make sense. She feels exhausted of not knowing, of not understanding.  
It’s not long before she reaches home. She unlocks the door, steps inside the hall, and busy as she is rubbing her temple to ease away some of the pain, she doesn’t catch the conversation floating in the hall from the half-open kitchen door.  
“…my dear girl, she’d love to remember, of course she would. More than anything. Sometimes… Sometimes, I think she knows something’s missing, and she can’t remember what, and it breaks her little heart, but the Doctor said she’d…”  
“I’m home”, she calls out.  
Wilf stops abruptly mid-sentence. The sound of a chair scraping the floor hastily makes her wince in pain. Wilf appears at the door, flustered and anxious.  
“Oh, sweetheart, you’re back?”, he asks, face red with fear of having been overheard.  
“No, I’ll be a little late, I’m nipping into the supermarket for some milk. D’you need anything?”, she says sarcastically. “‘Course I’m home, gramps.”  
But before Wilf has a chance to reply, Martha appears at his elbow.  
“Martha!”, exclaims Donna, and she’s too happy to see her friend to notice her headache getting worse. “What on earth are you doing here?”  
She rushes forward, and hugs her tightly, nearly crushing the flowers she’d still holding near her chest in the process.  
“Whoa there”, says Martha, smiling, but carefully avoiding Donna’s gaze. “Thought I’d come take you out for a pint or two. Didn’t expect you’d run late at work.”  
“Oh, that sounds like heaven. Sorry to keep you waiting, it was a mad day today.”  
“No worries. Your granddad kept me excellent company. So, are you up for that pint?”  
“I’m afraid I’m gonna have to pass this time, Martha. I’m knackered.”  
“Nah, don’t worry, I understand. I should’ve called you first and checked, before storming in your house.”  
“Fancy watching a movie instead?”  
“Go on, then. Your choice.”  
“Cheers”, said Donna, smiling a weary smile at Martha. “Just let me put these in water, and we can start right away.”  
Donna waves the forget-me-nots, and moves into the kitchen, searching for a vase to put them in. She doesn’t notice the uneasy frowns that appear on Wilf's and Martha’s faces, or the doubtful look they throw at the forget-me-nots.  
As soon as she’s out of earshot, Wilf turns to Martha.  
“Do whatever you can”, he whispers, his face crumpled with sadness and worry.  
“It might be…”  
“I know. The Doctor said she could burn and die. But all the same… I know she’d want you to at least try.”  
Martha squeezes his shoulder gently. They can hear Donna bustling in the kitchen. Martha looks at him, and smiles sadly.  
“Thank you”, she mutters, and joins Donna.  
“Oh please God, let it work…”, Wilf whispers.

* * *

  
“All right, here’s the deal”, the Doctor says seriously to the TARDIS. “We land quietly, and you choose the next destination. Anywhere. Anywhen.”  
The TARDIS whirs excitedly in response. He looks at the blue column in the middle of the console room from under knitted eyebrows.  
 _I don’t quite believe you, for some reason, but I’ll have to trust you…_ , he thinks, before he can stop himself. A gas mask hits him hard on the back of the head.  
“Ouch”, he mutters, rubbing the sore spot. “Oi, no need to be violent! Okay, here goes…”  
He pulls the lever. The TARDIS thrashes through the Time Vortex, mercifully silent. His tense muscles relax with relief, as the TARDIS travels noiselessly.  
The motion stops. He has arrived. Not a single sound is heard. He quickly walks to the doors. He tries to make as little noise as possible, but to his heightened Time Lord senses the soft squish of his trainers resembles cannon shots.  
He opens the door, and steps outside, cringing at the sound of the wood creaking beneath his fingertips. _Should probably grease the door nails_ , he thinks, adding it to the long list of maintenance work he should do to the TARDIS. As usual, he promptly forgets.  
He turns his attention to the high ceiling room he’s landed in. It is dark, yet he can still see in the faint light pouring in from the corridor through a pair of magnificent glass doors. The light can illuminate only a few metres into the room, a veil of thick darkness covering its deeper corners. Only the beginning of what he assumes to be endless corridors lined with bookshelves is visible, spreading out on either side of where the TARDIS has landed.  
The library of the Lunar University, in the year 4975.  
It’s nothing compared to the Library, of course. But still, astonishing, the number of volumes collected there.  
He buries his hands in his pockets, and strolls through the main corridor, suddenly realising that he hasn’t really thought this through. What is he looking for? Where should he start?  
The DoctorDonna. There can’t be much he doesn’t know about it already. It seems like a good place to start. Maybe he’ll stumble on something more specifically related to Donna.  
He’s fully aware that what he’s doing is dangerous. But he’s reckless-and desperate-enough to proceed with his plan anyway. But what if he reads something he doesn’t know? What if he finds out something about his own future? A shiver runs down his spine.  
 _Nah_ , he thinks arrogantly. He finds a terminal, and types his key word. DoctorDonna. The scan takes a few seconds to complete. When it does, his eyes double in surprise. 86,291 books are tagged under that subject. _Blimey_. A whole section is dedicated to the DoctorDonna. His breathing quickens. Perhaps this is more dangerous than he thought. He’s already in too deep to pull back now. He runs from corridor to corridor, till he finds the one he’s looking for. He enters it, trepidation filling his hearts. Yet on he goes. He walks down the corridor. It’s too dark to see. He takes out his sonic screwdriver, and points it to the lamp hanging high above his head from the ceiling. As the sonic whirs, the lamp springs to life, filling the corridor with much needed light. He puts the sonic back into his pocket, and takes out his specs.  
He cannot help but stare, his mouth hanging open. It’s one thing to read a number, and another seeing shelf upon shelf upon shelf stacked with books, all the titles of which contain the word DoctorDonna.  
“It can’t be…”, he mutters.  
Because the DoctorDonna existed only for a few minutes. An hour at the most. He made sure there was no trace left of it. He made sure Handy was transported to a different universe, and blocked his consciousness from Donna’s mind. The DoctorDonna is dead. Kaput. _He_ made sure the DoctorDonna is dead. He shudders. He thought he was done with that wretched night on the Crucible. Could he have been wrong? There is no denying that that brief moment had been of vital importance to the continuation of the universe, but 86,291 books?! There must be something he’s missing. Something staring him right in the eye, and yet he cannot tell what. Something important. Something big. Something obvious. Why is he suddenly so _blind_?  
The dark red spine of a particular book catches his eye. ‘Tales of the DoctorDonna: Legend Throughout the Universe’, it reads. What?  
Every single one of his capable brain cells screams to him to run into the TARDIS, take off, and never even think about all this, of Agatha’s book named ‘Partners in Crime’, of all the impossible coincidences. But curiosity is a force greater than the gravitational pull of a black hole itself. So his hand, in spite of all the foreboding, raises itself from his side, and stretches towards the book. He almost touches it.  
“You know, for a Time Lord, you can be really stupid at times.”  
He jumps back, and turns towards the voice, scared out of his wits.  
“Hello, sweetie”, River greets him.  
But she’s not the River he knows. The River slowly walking towards him, all seriousness, and no smile of any sort on her face, is younger than he’s ever seen her. She looks like she’s in her mid-twenties.  
He isn’t even surprised that it’s her. Not really.  
“You can’t be here…”, he whispers, shaking his head.  
“I can. And I am.”  
“Why?”  
“Because you are being spectacularly idiotic.”  
His hand closes the remaining distance between his fingertips and the spine of the book. River runs towards him, closes her fingers round his wrist and pulls his hand back.  
“River, you can’t stop me”, he says quietly, his eyes hard as he looks at her.  
“I have to. What on earth are you thinking, trying to read about yourself? Have you lost your mind completely?”  
“I’m not reading about myself.”  
“Is this what you’ve been telling yourself? Because if it is, you’ve got it all wrong.”  
“How did you know I’d be here?”  
He doesn’t bother to ask how she got here, a century before she’s even born. He’s already noticed Jack Harkness’ Vortex Manipulator strapped on her wrist.  
“I was reliably informed by a source.”  
“What source?”  
“A source that’s trying to stop you from being stupid. And you’re being very difficult about it, I must add.”  
“Then you know why I’m here.”  
“Yes. And it doesn’t make it any less stupid. You, Doctor, are playing with fire. Anything you happen to read about your future will become a fixed point. You can’t do that. There are rules.”  
“But I need to know!”  
“Spoilers!”, she whispers dangerously.  
“No!”, he shouts. “NO! For once, I want to know! I want to know what is going on. I want to know what I’m missing! I want to know where I’m going, before it’s too late! I want to know if…”  
He doesn’t say it. He doesn’t need to. She already knows how that sentence would’ve ended.  
“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait, Doctor. You can’t travel on your own time line, you know that. This is as close as you can get to that. This is cheating. For once, you’ll have to content yourself without foreknowledge, as everyone else does.”  
“Who are you?”, he demands of her. “Who are you, with such knowledge of the laws of time? Who can you possibly be to stop me?”  
“Someone you trust. Not now, but in the future. Someone who owes you a favour. Now, let me repay the debt, and listen to me!”  
Their eyes lock, and the Doctor’s resolve slackens. He’s scared. Bloody terrified. Not of the book he’s still holding the spine of. Rather of the young woman holding his wrist, and putting him back in line.  
“Leave that book alone. Please, _please_ , Doctor. You have to trust me. You need to trust me.”  
“WHY?!”, he shouts with all his might, forgetting he’s sneaked into a library in the middle of the night.  
The alarm goes off, the ear-splitting sound of sirens fills the gigantic room, and resonates on the books and the shelves. Their hands fly to their ears.  
“RUN!”, shouts the Doctor as he takes off, River following quickly.  
But it is too late. Two guards appear, and corner them. Thankfully, they turn off the alarm, and silence is restored in the library.  
“IDs! Who are you two, and what are you doing here at this time of night?”, one of the guards demands.  
The Doctor’s brain is in overdrive. His eyes dart around, searching for anything that might help them.  
“Oh, terribly sorry to bother you”, he says in his cheerfully apologetic voice. “Visiting Professor John Smith, Physics Department”, he says, and brandishes the psychic paper at the guards. They examine it, and relax. “Just doing some late-night research”, he smiles, replacing the psychic paper in his inner pocket. “I get terrible jet lag, you know, all this travelling… Impossible to get a decent night’s sleep.”  
“Well, you might have warned us, Professor”, says the guard.  
“And what about you?”, asks the second guard, pointing at River.  
The Doctor catches a glimmer on River’s ring finger, as she raises her hands as a sign that she’s unarmed. He smiles ruefully.  
“Oh, my wife, River… Came along to help me take notes. Hope that’s not a problem.”  
“No, it isn’t. Just inform us beforehand, Professor. Bosses aren’t too happy about library break-ins. You know, especially because of the… sensitive stuff”, he says, indicating the books surrounding them.  
“Yeah, of course, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I will next time.”  
“We’ll leave you to it, then. Goodnight, Professor, Mrs Smith…”  
“Yes, lovely, thank you! Goodnight!”  
And finally, the guards are on their way, towards their little office on the other side of the maze of corridors in which they’re in.  
It’s only then that the Doctor notices that River’s looking at him as if he just shot a puppy.  
“What, what is it, what’ve I done?”, he asks, confused.  
He doesn’t see the slap that lands on his cheek with a satisfying echo to it coming.  
“What was that for?!”, he asks, rubbing his cheek.  
“Have you gone mad?”, she demands to know, fury plainly written across her features.  
He stares blankly back at her.  
“ _Why did you say that… that thing?_ ”  
“What thing?”  
“That… That you are… my _husband_! Oh, my husband will be _furious_!”  
“Ooooh, that…”, he nods. Then smiles cheekily, wiggles his eyebrows, and says “Well, I know for certain that he won’t.”  
If the first slap was unexpected, the second he couldn’t predict if all his future and past lives depended on it.  
“Hey, what was that for?!”  
“Making sure you won’t do or say anything stupid again.”  
“But… But, River, I’m your husband…”  
She looks ready to slap him again. He prepares to duck.  
River sighs exasperatedly, and takes out of her blouse a golden pendant. Seething, she opens it, and gives it to the Doctor.  
Inside is a photo of her, dressed in white, smiling brightly… next to a young man that most certainly isn’t the Doctor.  
“That’s Raj. _That’s_ my husband.”  
And finally, _finally_ , he realises she’s been teasing him all this time, because he thought he was her husband.  
He suddenly feels monumentally stupid.  
“Oh. Right. Sorry”, he mumbles.  
“Do not ever mention you said you were my husband, or I’ll never hear the end of this… He can be quite jealous.”  
“I wonder why…”, he mutters under his breath.  
River’s glare is so eloquent, she could’ve melted a solid iceberg.  
“Now get out of this library, before you piss me off any more”, she says, dead serious. “And don’t you ever go looking for the DoctorDonna again, Doctor. It will find you. And when it does… God help us all.”

* * *

  
It’s nearly eleven o’clock by the time the movie’s finished. Martha leaves Donna’s home five minutes later, shouting a last goodnight over her shoulder. She walks down the road, towards the bus station, breathing in the early spring smells that waft to her from the neat little gardens on either side of the road. But a chill creeps up her spine. A chill that has nothing to do with the cold night.  
She goes on walking, straining her ears for a sound that might be out of the ordinary. She hears nothing. The bark of a dog. The shriek of a cat. But nothing that could mean she’s being followed.  
And yet, she can’t shake the feeling off her.  
She reaches the end of the road, and starts walking up the Chiswick high street. As the lights from the shops surround her, the feeling disappears. Relaxed, she walks with a spring in her step the remaining distance to the bus stop. And if she feels a man’s eyes-a tall man, in an impeccable suit and black rimmed glasses-on her as she climbs onto the bus, she doesn’t give it a second thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't wait to post the next chapter... It's my favourite!!! He he he
> 
> In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this one!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok guys, let the fun begin! This and the next chapter are my two absolute favs! I hope you enjoy them!

The Doctor dances around the console, setting the old girl’s course for Torchwood, Cardiff, Wales, the United Kingdom, the 29th of June, 2009, 16:00. He silently thanks Martha, as he sighs with relief. Finally something to do. The past week has been a nightmare.  
Ever since leaving the library of the Lunar University, he has been struggling his every waking moment not to go back and try to find out more about Donna. He’s been in a state of daze. Still not able to fully comprehend River’s arguments, it was all he could do to stare silently into nothingness, containing his muscles from moving, going to the console room, and putting the coordinates for Chiswick. In the end, it was the image of Donna herself that stopped him from being an idiot. If his mind was in a clearer state, he would’ve snorted, and commented that that sounded like the story of his life with her.  
And besides, how could he ever face her?  
No. Martha’s phone call was just what he needed: a distraction.  
He taps the console impatiently, as the TARDIS travels, thrashing, through the Vortex. When the old girl finally lands, the whooshing noise filling the room and the Doctor’s hearts, he feels so elated, he thinks he might actually fly. He runs to the door and throws it open, a scary, manic grin stretching the muscles of his face.  
Across the door, Martha, Jack and Tom are stretched out in chairs, with matching dejected and downright exhausted looks on their faces. They look up blearily, and jump up at the noise, the blue box that has suddenly materialised in their office, and the frighteningly wild Doctor that has thrown open the door.  
“About bloody time!”, exclaims Martha.  
The Doctor notices how she refrains from jumping into his arms for their usual hug.  
“Hey, what’s that about? You asked me to come, I came. And what’s with the swearing? You never swear.”  
“Yeah, I did ask you to come here. _Ten hours ago_. It’s flipping two in the morning!”  
“Oh. Right. Sorry. Navigation trouble. You know how it can be…”  
He silently gives a swift kick to the wooden box behind him.  
Martha rubs her nape tiredly, evidently willing herself to take it easy on the Doctor. If he didn’t know better, he’d say she was bracing herself… The question is, what for?  
 _Nah, I’m being stupid. She’s just tired, that’s all._  
“Bloody stupid chairs…”, Martha mutters, and Tom grunts in agreement.  
But the Doctor’s face creases with a frown. There it is again.  
“Apparently, she does that now. Cuss. A lot. It’s funny, sometimes. Till she starts cussing at you. Then it’s just scary”, Jack murmurs, suddenly standing next to the Doctor.  
“I can imagine that…”, he mutters back.  
He turns to look at Jack. Only, he’s studiously avoiding his gaze. And so are Tom and Martha.  
“Right. So. An office visit”, starts the Doctor, smile returning to his lips. “The Doctor is here. How may I help? Or is this just a social call? I never can tell, to be honest… Maybe because it usually starts as a fun little visit, and then something happens, and BAM, we’re running as if our lives depend on it, which, to be fair, they usually do. Saving the universe and being brilliant is such a big part of who I am and what I do, I can’t really take time off, as it were.”  
He laughs a little at his own joke. No one joins in.  
“No, it’s neither, Doctor”, says Martha, and the Doctor suddenly notices the unbearable stillness of the room.  
The smile disappears, and he catches himself holding his breath.  
“We need to talk to you… about Donna.”  
Martha finally raises her eyes to his. And she is dead serious.  
It is a mere nanosecond, and no one notices but him: the pounding of his hearts, the blood ringing in his ears, the need to keel to the floor, the overwhelming hopelessness, the jaw loosening, wanting to drop to the floor, the back of his eyes stinging with every single unshed tear, the heart wrenching _pain_. This mere nanosecond feels like an eternity to the Time Lord. It goes completely unnoticed by the humans. All they can see are the lines of the Doctor’s face hardening, his shoulders hunching, as if getting ready for battle, every single of the 904 years of his eternal life suddenly evident in his tired, weary eyes.  
And they expected all of it. They are not backing now. They are ready.  
“Martha, there is nothing to talk about”, comes the Doctor’s reply, dangerously soft and calm.  
“Yes, there is”, says Martha, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “And I think we’ve-no, _you’ve_ -put it off for long enough.”  
He’s ready to protest, to yell at her to stop, to change the subject, to storm into the TARDIS and take off. But Jack speaks before he has a chance to move.  
“Doctor, please, just listen to what we have to say.”  
“Oh, so you’re in this as well?”, he asks, turning to Jack, white hot anger bubbling inside him.  
“Doctor, please, just hear her out.”  
This time it’s Tom that pleads. He’s standing next to Martha, his hand gripping hers in support, firm and ready to help her make her point. And it’s that which calms him down enough to listen.  
He doesn’t move, but he keeps his mouth shut. It is all the signal Martha needs to start talking.  
“You know how I’ve been bumping into Donna everywhere”, she says, and adds before he has time to protest, “and I know you said that I shouldn’t talk to her, or anything, but I did.”  
“You promised, Martha…”, he whispers, shaking all over in terror and sadness.  
“But she was so sad, Doctor! So lost, and hopeless, and I wanted to comfort her! I couldn’t do that without talking to her. So, I went up to her outside the Millennium Centre, and introduced myself.”  
“Outside the… What was she doing here?”, he asks, curiosity winning over the sheer fear of what was going to follow.  
“I dunno”, Martha shrugs. “But there she was, Doctor, in the flesh! She’d come here in the same train as me! I thought… I thought maybe the link between you and her,  maybe the DoctorDonna was still there. I thought I was _meant_ to meet her. I told her my name…”  
“You told her your name…”, asks the Doctor, the anger beginning to spill in his chest.  
“Nothing happened, Doctor, I swear!”  
“You couldn’t have known that… She could’ve burned, for all you knew…”  
“Yes. But she didn’t.”  
Silence prevails, and after a moment, Martha continues.  
“We started hanging out. You have no idea how lonely she is, Doctor. She’s bored out of her skull in Chiswick, and she’s no one to talk to. And even if she did, she wouldn't know what to talk about. She’s so sad, Doctor, so sad… She’s missing out on the life she wanted to live, and she knows it, even if she can’t remember how that life was, or whom it included.”  
The Doctor’s breaths are deep. He doesn’t speak. He can’t.  
“That was all I was gonna do-be a friend to her, I promise. But I noticed she got some weird fixations.”  
And Martha talks of all the things that Donna gets into her head that she has to do; go to Brighton with no apparent reason, read about the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD till her eyes crossed with the exhaustion, her obsession with the Tommy and Tuppence novels by Agatha Christie, the never ending headaches.  
The Doctor listens silently, his face a hard mask, as his breathing deepens, and anger chokes him up. And yet, he cannot speak. Not yet. So he lets Martha talk.  
She hesitates. Just for a moment. She takes a deep breath, and goes on.  
“We did some tests. Blood tests, brain scans, DNA extraction, PCR and sequencing. Doctor, her biology is changing.”  
All eyes are fixed on him, waiting for a reaction. He just looks at them terrified. Jack silently opens a computer screen. He double clicks on a medical file, filled with test results that could belong to a human. But not quite…  
“Her DNA is changing”, Tom explains. “Her ageing process has slowed down immensely. To be exact, it has frozen. She could live another hundred years, and she wouldn’t age a day.”  
“And yes, she will live another hundred years”, Martha answers his question before he  can even say it. “She could live another thousand years.”  
Finally, he speaks.  
“Could she… regenerate?”, he asks is a small voice.  
“I can’t tell. You can answer that question better than any of us. It’s too great a change, I’d say”, replies Martha. “But, at this point, her DNA is more Time Lord than human.”  
The Earth is spinning. He’s always been aware of that. Only now, he can feel the acceleration in his head, he can feel the turning of the little rock they’re on, and he is dizzy. His mouth is open. His breathing laboured. His eyes are lost.  
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she grew a second heart, to be honest”, says Martha. “Might take a few centuries for it to kick in, you know, fully grow and start functioning properly, in the way a Time Lord’s does. She’s already been exposed to the Vortex, so the evolution of her genes is accelerated. And that could explain the augmented lifespan.”  
“And her brain is a thing of wonder”, adds Tom. “Her brain scans go berserk, even the ones we took while she was unconscious.”  
“The brain activity she’s having would be enough to severely damage, and ultimately kill, an ordinary human being”, adds Martha. “But all that Donna can feel is a slight headache, whenever parts of her subconscious that are connected to you are stirred.”  
“Stop it”, whispers the Doctor, but no one hears.  
“There could be a way, dangerous, lethal even, but there is a chance it might work, to isolate your consciousness inside her brain, and then completely erase it, leaving her own memories of your time together intact”, Martha goes ruthlessly on, unaware of the Doctor’s turmoil.  
“STOP IT!”  
He screams it. His voice breaks at the edges. He turns away, all of this too much for him. He can’t speak, that much is evident.  
“Doctor, I’m afraid this is not your choice to make”, Martha says quietly.  
“Oh, and it’s yours?”, he spins around to face her. His face is broken with pain, his eyes glisten with unshed tears, and anger radiates off of every pore in his body. “You get to decide whether Donna Noble lives or dies, without even considering what the consequences will be for me?”  
His voice is unsteady. How he manages to not cry, no one can understand.  
“But what did she want, Doctor?”, Martha asks forcefully.  
That shuts him up. He breathes heavily. Martha moves closer, in an attempt to soothe him, calm him down. He retreats like a scared and wounded animal.  
“There is a chance we might succeed, Doctor”, says Jack.  
“And there’s a chance she’ll die.”  
Silence descends in the room, thick with the horrible possibility. All the Doctor can think of is the dreadful, long minutes he thought her dead in the Dalek Crucible. And his hearts nearly stop with pain.  
“That was the choice I had when I wiped her mind. Half a life, or no life at all. Donna Noble back in Chiswick, believing to be nothing special, looking at me and thinking I’m a queer old nutter, or Donna Noble writhing in agony before collapsing dead in my arms. D’you think I wanted this? D’you honestly believe that was my choice? When it really came down to it, there was _no_ choice. And you know that, Martha Jones. You know that. And you would’ve done exactly the same, no matter how much she truly preferred dying to going back.”  
Martha lowers her gaze, as tears finally, _finally_ , spill out of the Doctor’s eyes. He manages to stop them before the others notice. Or so he thinks.  
“So please”, he says, eyebrows raised dangerously high on his forehead, “don’t go anywhere near Donna Noble again…”  
He doesn’t wait for an answer. He turns, steps into the TARDIS, and takes off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to my gal, Margaret, for her help with the biology-medicine... stuff. Not my strong suit, I'm an applied physics student, poor thing...
> 
> Anyway, posting new chapters will become more of a challenge, as I get into the thick of it with my exams... So I would like to ask for your patience, my friends!


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I had to take a break from studying to post this! Let the fun begin!

The door closes behind him. The thudding noise seals him inside the TARDIS. He is alone. A few tears escape his eyes, and he rubs them away furiously. He moves swiftly to the console, and sets the old girl into the Vortex. He tries, Rassilon knows, he tries to keep it together, to stop the tears from springing like a fountain in his eyes. But there is no stopping them. Not anymore.  
All the agony of life without Donna, all the pain of knowing she can’t even remember his face, all the loneliness of the past months is finally set free. He cries, he cries, he cries, lost in his own world of complete misery. For a moment, there is nothing in the universe but him, his tears, and his sorrow.  
He’s sagged to the floor, but he hasn’t noticed. He is alone. Completely alone. His own heartache is his only companion now.  
Nearly an hour passes before his tears stop, the sobs die in his chest, and he is aware of his surroundings once again. He collects himself, he stands shakily on his feet, and, dejected, he looks around him.  
Something catches his eye as he sweeps his gaze over the console. Something white, and very much out of place. He turns his attention to it, and through the bleariness of his tears, he sees a little white headdress.  
 _Donna’s_ little white headdress.  
He wants to walk to the console, crash the bloody thing with his hands, and throw it out into the Vortex. Only, he can’t. He’s fixed there, unmoving, staring at it.  
 _“Find someone.”_  
 _“I don’t need anyone.”_  
 _“Yes, you do.”_  
His Donna. His brilliant Donna. Understanding him better than he understands himself in a single day of knowing him. After all the heartache of realising the man she loved had used her, she was able to put that aside, and make sure he was all right.  
His _beautiful_ Donna.  
He doesn’t stop the thought, as he used to when she was travelling with him, or even during the long days of her absence. There is no point in denying it anymore.  
Oh, it was shimmering all right from the very start.  
 _“Will I ever see you again?”_  
 _“If I’m lucky.”_  
And he had been, oh so very lucky.  
He was too blinded by Rose to even suspect the twinge his hearts gave when he left her in the snow that day. Or even when he saw her again, so wonderfully out of the blue.  
It started boiling in the fires of Vesuvius. He ruled it out as admiration for her compassion. He had always been good at inventing excuses for himself.  
He finally felt the heat after Messaline. He studiously ignored it. Mates only, they had agreed. Even he suspected it wasn’t only on his part that the agreement was starting to be violated.  
He got burnt during that stupid detox. The way she looked in that dress should’ve been a hint, but he didn’t realise till it was too late. Till there was no going back. Despite the ginger beer, the walnuts, and, Rassilon almighty, the anchovies, time had stood still as she kissed him with the force of a hurricane.  
 _“I need to do that more often.”_  
Donna’s scared, breathless expression made him backtrack.  
 _“I meant the detox.”_  
He never meant the detox. But keeping that agreement had seemed of vital importance. They had promised. And what if he was wrong? What if he really was just a long streak of alien nothing to her? Could he risk losing her? His best mate? The person with which no words were needed to communicate?  
The thick awkwardness of co-habitation in the TARDIS after that should have quieted his doubts. Silence was now stretched and full of unsaid thoughts, accidental touching was electrocuting to both, and Donna was spending more and more time in her room.  
And then, Midnight happened. He was shaken, she could see that. He tried going to sleep. It didn’t work. He tried walking around in his room. It felt claustrophobic. He started walking around the TARDIS, hoping to find peace. He came to the kitchen for a warm cup of tea, fortified with a shot of whisky. He found her there, nursing her own cup, and a steaming mug resting across from her on the table, in front of the seat he usually occupied. She looked exhausted. Yet there she was, still awake, waiting for him. Silently, he sat, and took a careful swig. He felt the tang of the alcohol on his tongue, and his hearts filled with love. He raised his eyes to hers. He saw gentleness there.  
He smiled a little. No matter what went wrong, Donna was there, to see the best in him. That made the darkness inside him recede a little.  
All awkwardness evaporated after that silent night in the kitchen. They loved each other deeply. What did it matter if it was just friendship or more? Time was running out, either way. And they both knew that.  
 _“I was gonna be with you. Forever. Rest of my life.”_  
Only, they didn’t even get that. And he just realises how much he’s missing her. Her presence in the TARDIS. Her snarky comments, her cutting humour, her compassion, her ability to understand him completely, without ever demanding an explanation. The reassurance he gave her whenever she started putting herself down. Her fiery red hair. Her stunning blue eyes. _All_ of her.  
He cannot pretend to be fine anymore. Donna Noble is the most important woman in the whole, wide universe. She’s the most important woman to _him_. The woman who saved his life in so many ways. And he cannot keep it back any longer. Time to repay the debt.  
His breaths are deep. His eyes are wild. His mouth hangs open with the sudden staggering realisation that he will do just about _anything_ to have Donna Noble back in the TARDIS, whole and very much alive. A small voice at the back of his head that sounds dangerously like Martha’s whispers, _and as a Time Lady_. He should drown it out. He doesn’t. He amplifies it.  
His features harden with stern determination. Because, after all this time of wallowing in misery and helplessness, he can do something. He can try to bring back Donna. And, by Rassilon, he will succeed.  
“Allons-y!”, he shouts, and runs around the console, pulling levers and pressing buttons. The whirring of the TARDIS as it travels through time and space has never sounded happier.

* * *

  
The whooshing noise of the TARDIS taking off resounds off the walls of Jack’s office for awhile after the blue box has disappeared. Martha’s eyes can’t leave the spot it occupied. She’s dejected, she’s sad, and she feels like kicking something.  
A strong hand presses her shoulder. She knows without looking that it’s Tom’s. She takes his hand between her own, and nuzzles against his side, in a vain attempt to feel better.  
“I failed…”, she murmurs, and Tom hugs her fiercely.  
“You didn’t fail”, says Jack. “He didn’t wanna listen. We already knew he wouldn’t.”  
“I don’t understand… Why not at least try…”, asks Tom, confused.  
“He thought her dead once…”, says Jack, leaning against his desk. “I don’t think he’d like to go through that again. Especially if it was for real this time…”  
“I should’ve tried harder… I should’ve been gentler…”, mutters Martha. “I wouldn’t dare try this without the Doctor’s help. I failed her…”  
But before she can finish her phrase, the whooshing sound of the TARDIS fills the room once again, and the blue box fades into being in front of their very eyes. All three hold their breath in anxious surprise.  
The door opens. A very determined Doctor comes out. He walks straight to Martha.  
“What do you mean, second heart? Has it began growing yet? And I’ll need to see those DNA tests, make sure we’re talking about Time Lord alterations, and not jellyfish… That’d be awkward…”  
Martha, Jack and Tom stand eerily still as the Doctor starts bustling around the office with nervous energy.  
“What are you standing there for? Come on!”, he sniffles a little. “We have work to do.”  
He throws the TARDIS doors open, so that all three can come in. Martha’s eyes close for a moment, as a smile forms on her lips.  
“Allons-y!”, she mumbles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooooh, finally, don't you think? I had such fun writing every single word from this point onwards... :D I have rather a grandiose plot, I hope I've done it justice!


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, hello! Dramatic chapter to compensate for the hiatus!

Donna walks to work with a spring in her step, a cup of steaming hot coffee in her hand. It’s a bright spring morning, and its cheerfulness seems contagious. Even Donna is infected. She hasn’t realised the small, tentative smile that’s plastered on her lips. But she noticed the ease with which she got out of bed, the slight touches of make-up she wore after so many months, the smile on her grandfather’s lips as she kissed him goodbye. She notices the little bubble of hope, shy still, but _there_ , that has formed in her chest.  
Her mind is clear with… Well, she hasn’t used the word in a while, but it’s the only one to describe the feeling; joy. Her mind is clear with joy. Like something good has happened.  
For a single moment, doubt enters her thoughts. She thinks she must be going bonkers. There’s no other way to explain this feeling. Where’s all the misery, the restlessness, the pointlessness of the past few months? She must be losing her mind.  
And yet, she can’t help but cherish the feeling. She decides that she’ll take it, let it fill her up. It’s been too long since she’s felt happy and whole. And the details of that time are fuzzy…  
Her head starts to ache. She rubs her temple, willing the pain to disappear. Even so, her mood is not dampened.  
She notices a man coming down the street. A very handsome man, charm oozing out of every pore, impeccably dressed in a dark suit with a teal tie, with dark-rimmed glasses framing his deep blue eyes. A man that, in another time, she’d have sauntered to, and asked for his number.  
Only, he is walking straight to her. She smiles at him, and he returns the gesture.  
“Donna Noble?”, he asks her, once he’s standing right in front of her.  
She starts. How does he know her name? She’s ready to retort, to snap, to throw a nasty barb at him, and storm off. But her cheery mood, and his intense stare, stop her.  
“Yes. How can I help you?”, she answers smiling.  
She notices his arm raising itself. She feels something by her ear. He touches her temple, and before she can shout out her surprise, darkness envelops her.

* * *

  
Cold. It’s cold. That’s the first thing she notices. Darkness still surrounds her. She starts getting aware of her body. It’s sore. It’s lying on something hard, wet and cold. _Great, I just ruined my coat. I’ll never hear the end of it from mum…_  
But that thought is almost immediately gone as soon as her brain starts working properly again, and she recalls that she has bigger problems at the moment.  
The man in the dark suit touching her temple… That’s the last thing she recalls. She tries to move. She hurts too much, slumped as she is what can only be the ground. The dull thumping of shoes on the floor moves towards her. She tries to open her eyes. They refuse to. She shuts them tighter. Slowly, they cooperate. Hesitantly, her eyelids open. Light greets her throbbing eyes. She blinks. The footsteps have stopped. She finally manages to focus. A man is hunching over her. A man with black-rimmed glasses.  
“Wakey wakey!”, he croons to her.  
He smiles a smile that chills the blood in her veins.  
“Where am I?”, she says in a weak voice. Adrenaline starts pumping furiously through her system, and suddenly she is hyperaware of the man’s proximity. “What’ve you done to me?”, she demands to know, her voice gaining in strength and volume.  
“Feisty”, comments the man. “Just like the previous one. He does like his girls with a bit of spunk, the Doctor. Think it gets him on.”  
His voice is deep and dangerous. It sends shivers up Donna’s spine. Her body tenses with sheer fear. She feels ready to make a run for it. But she stays calm. Better keep him mollified till she gets a chance of bolting.  
“You a nutter, or something? What do you want from me?”  
“Oh, nothing”, he replies. “It’s the Doctor I want. Or rather… the DoctorDonna. What do you know about it? Where is it?”  
“I’m no doctor, but you could definitely use a crazy doctor, let me tell you, sunshine. I know of a good one, want his number?”  
“Oooh, and cheeky, too. Yes, I see why he likes you so. But enough chitter chatter.” He grabs her arm fiercely and jerks her upwards. “Where is the DoctorDonna?”, he whispers dangerously in her ear.  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about”, she spits. “Now, let go of me.”  
He looks her hard in the eyes. Her head starts aching something fierce.  
His grip on her arm loosens. She slumps back onto the ground. Doctor, Donna, doctor, Donna, DoctorDonna… The pain in her head makes her eyes ache. Through her blurred vision, she sees another form lying on the floor, a few feet away from her. It shivers. It’s dressed in a blue suit.  
“Well, since you want to play coy, and pretend you don’t know what the DoctorDonna is, I think I’ll proceed straight to plan B”, says the man.  
She doesn’t see the strange device he takes out of his pocket. Because her eyes have found the form’s face. Bald, and yellow, the face triggers something in her brain, and she wants to scream her lungs out. It takes all her willpower not to. Then she notices the tentacles springing from where the mouth should be.  
Snow. She doesn’t understand why, but that’s what she thinks of, as her head nearly splits with pain. Snow, and an eerily beautiful and melancholy song. The Ood…  
The DoctorDonna…  
Captivity and freedom… And everything in between…  
Time is swirling in her mind. Memories come flooding back into her brain, and she can hold it back no longer.  
She screams with all her might.  
All that time of not understanding, of not remembering, explodes into existence in her brain. Pompeii, fat, Agatha Christie, the missing Earth, Daleks, Martha, potato heads, the DoctorDonna.  
And in the thick of it all, an insanely thin man with sticky hair and a tight brown pinstripe suit, with ancient eyes.  
 _Oh, I’m gonna slap the skinny sod into next week_ , she thinks fiercely, as she keeps screaming, the pain getting worse and worse.  
She can stay on the ground no longer. Blinded by the pain, she raises herself stumbling, and starts running, God knows in what direction.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I was quick to update this time, hope the chapter is worth the previous cliffhanger!

The lines in front of Martha’s eyes begin to blur. She blinks, in a vain attempt to refocus her tired eyes on the book in front of her. She’s lost all track of time. Deep in the TARDIS library, they have no way of knowing if it’s morning or evening, if it’s still spring, or even if it’s still 2009.  
It feels like an eternity. Her phone tells her it’s only been a week. The first day had been better: they had actually done something, reached some conclusions. In the TARDIS lab, the Doctor had ran over Donna’s tests himself. He had explained to her, Tom and Jack that she was indeed changing into a Time Lord, and given enough time, her brain would eventually process the excess of information and memories from his own consciousness. But that could take centuries, so they needed to find a way to separate his memories from hers, and wipe them from her brain altogether. What he’d done quickly after the metacrisis, wiping all memories connected to him, could now be done with precision, like an operation, and he could get rid only his own consciousness, leaving her memories intact. They could restore Donna Noble’s memories.  
And then, they’d hit a wall. They had to find how they would go about doing that. Telepathically seems to be the best option, but they have to distinguish the various techniques. The Doctor is being thorough; he is determined to get it right this time.  
So there they are, a week later, slumped over books, with Donna’s brain scans scattered on the enormous desk they’re sitting around, taking short breaks for food, drink, a shower, and a few hours of sleep.  
Not the Doctor, though. He hasn’t slept in days. He’s only taken the occasional shower after Jack commented that he looked, and smelt, like a caveman, and that he’d always been into animalistic sex. He only eats whenever someone bothers to make him a sandwich and be such a pain in the arse about it, that he has to shovel it down, so they can shut up, and he can go back to reading. The only thing he does with minimum effort is down one cup of coffee after another.  
Martha’s eyes wander from the page she’s already read two times, but still can’t understand for the life of her. Tom, exhausted, is snoring softly on the huge book he’s supposed to be reading. Jack is nodding off, only managing to hold himself awake by pinching his own hand. The Doctor is gripping the book he’s pouring over with a vice, his specs have sled down his nose, but his concentration is so intense, it has creased his face in a frown almost beyond recognition. Martha feels she can almost touch the flow of knowledge from the book to his brain.  
She shakes her head. She should be focusing on her own book.  
 _Nice, strong cup of coffee, I think, before I continue. Jack could do with the caffeine as well._  
But before she has a chance to raise herself from her chair, her phone goes off. Tom wakes with a start, and tries to pretend he hadn’t fallen asleep in the first place. Jack rubs his eyes tiredly. The Doctor barely notices.  
Martha looks at the screen. _Donna_. With a heavy feeling on her chest, she answers.  
“Donna, hi!”  
That gets the Doctor’s attention all right. His eyes snap from the book to Martha with the speed of light.  
“Martha”, says Donna. She sounds breathless and angry. “Tell him I will kill him!”  
Her heart drops.  
“Tell whom you will kill him?”, she asks dreading the answer.  
“The big, outer space dunce next to you!”  
She has no time to process Donna’s words, as a scream of pure agony nearly snaps her eardrums.  
“Donna? _Donna_? Can you hear me? Where are you? DONNA!”  
“Martha, what’s going on?”, asks the Doctor.  
She loses connection. She swears, kicking her chair across the room.  
“Martha, tell me what happened.”  
The Doctor’s voice is calm. Deadly so. She realises that, in this moment, he is at his most vulnerable. And most dangerous.  
“She-she remembered. I think. She said ‘Tell him I will kill him. The big, outer space dunce next to you.’”  
Intense eyes, to the point she fears they will simply pop out of their sockets. That’s all she sees. Then its a flurry of pinstripe, and he’s out of the room in a heart beat. She exchanges a glance filled with dread with Tom and Jack. They storm after him.  
To no one’s surprise, they find him in the console room, rushing around the console, a grim expression set on his features.  
“Give me the date of the phone call”, he orders, and Martha complies without a second thought.  
“3 April, 2009”, she answers, “8:48 in the morning.”  
“Jack, set in the timezone”, he orders.  
Jack does so in silence.  
No one dares to ask questions or offer any form of compassion and reassurance. They are too aware of the delicate equilibrium of the Doctor’s psychology. Try to save Donna first. Before it is too late. Emotion later.  
So they pretend they do not notice that he’s slightly shaking, or that his mad energy could outburn a sun.  
“Did she say where she is?”, asks the Doctor, turning his wild eyes to Martha.  
“No, but at that time in the morning she’d be walking to work.”  
“Right, scan the greater Chiswick area for Time Lord DNA, or residual regeneration energy.”  
Jack and Martha exchange a look of pure dread.  
“That’s the quickest way to find her”, the Doctor finishes.  
Martha does as she’s told. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches Tom standing awkwardly by her, at a loss how to help. She grabs his hand with a vice, and he squeezes right back with equal force. Their hands stay entwined as she programs the TARDIS to scan Chiswick on the 3rd of April, 2009, at 8:48 for Time Lord DNA.  
It takes a few minutes of agony, but finally the screen lights up, announcing that the area has been scanned. The Doctor is by her side in a heart beat, pouring over the results.  
She notices two dots appearing on the screen, right by each other.  
He frowns.  
“It can’t be… How can that be? It can’t be!”, he says, almost losing control.  
His bottom lip quivers, and Martha takes charge.  
“Doctor, we need to find Donna. We’ll deal with this later. The dots are in the same alley. Let’s go there, and see what’s the matter. It’s probably just a glitch, the TARDIS being mistaken…”  
They all know that the possibility of the TARDIS being wrong is next to null. They pretend to be pacified by Martha’s explanation.  
The Doctor nods seriously, and returns to his position in front of the steering levers. His unsteady driving causes them to thrash through the vortex. But the moment the landing noise fills the room, all four run to the doors. The Doctor opens them with a snap of his fingers, too eager to be outside to be bothered with doorknobs.  
He rushes out. He looks left and right, his face worn with worry and trepidation. He notices a woman’s form slumped to the ground, a few feet away from where the TARDIS has landed. A ginger ponytail is distinguishable on the grey floor of the alley.  
The Doctor breaks into a run. He’s crouching over her in an instant. He takes the unconscious figure in his arms, and looks into Donna’s face, after all these months. He shakes all over, and silent tears run down his cheeks. For a heart wrenching second, he’s reminded of that night in the rain outside her house.  
Jack and Tom run to him to help. Tom, with the presence of mind of a doctor, checks her pulse. The Doctor turns his attention to him. Relief washes over his face as soon as he finds it. But worry creases it as soon as he realises how erratic and quick it is.  
“She’s going into cardiac arrest”, he murmurs seriously.  
A sob escapes the Doctor. He gently touches his fingers to Donna’s temple. He feels the residual regeneration energy still buzzing in her mind.  
“Oh, thank Rassilon…”, he whispers.  
His defences worked: as soon as Donna started to remember, a ripple of regeneration energy was to knock her out unconscious, before any damage could be done to her brain.  
But he had not anticipated what would happen to the rest of her body.  
“Doctor, we must help her. NOW!”, shouts Tom.  
It is enough to snap the Doctor out of his stupor.  
“Help me!”, he says, and this time round, it’s determination that pushes him on to stand, cradling Donna’s head carefully, instead of helplessness.  
Jack takes hold of her legs, and the two of them take her into the TARDIS.  
Tom takes out his medical kit that he’s been keeping in the TARDIS console room.  
“Let’s take her to the Med Bay”, he breathes.  
“No, it’s too far away”, says Tom. “She needs my attention NOW.”  
The Doctor watches transfixed, as Tom takes two pads connected to a defibrillator out of a bag.  
“Clear!”, he shouts, and attaches the pads on Donna’s chest.  
An electric surge convulses her body, but it is not enough. Tom waits for the machine to recharge, then tries again. And again. And again.  
Finally, Donna’s body gives a start, she takes a deep breath, her eyes fly open, and the Doctor feels his hearts skip a beat.  
He reacts before Tom gets a chance to tend to Donna any further. He touches her temple, and she is unconscious again.  
“Why did you do that for?”, asks Tom angrily.  
“She’s remembered. If she remains conscious, her brain will burn up.”  
The Doctor stands, and walks over to the console, wanting to put the old girl into the Vortex.  
“Hey, Doctor, wait!”, shouts Jack, as he’s trying to move Donna onto the jump seat, to make her more comfortable. “Martha’s not in here.”  
The Doctor nods, and strides once again out of the doors. His heartbeats are calming down. Donna is still in danger, but not in imminent danger. _Now is_ not _the time to have a panic attack_. _You won’t be of any use to her in hysterics_ , he reminds himself.  
He notices Martha hunched over a man’s figure on the ground. He moves towards her.  
“How’s Donna?”, she asks, her eyes never leaving the man’s face.  
“She got through, thanks to Tom”, he murmurs back.  
He too turns his attention to the unconscious man.  
“D’you know him?”, asks Martha.  
He asks himself the same question. He has the strangest feeling that he knows this man oh so well. But he dares not say it. He dares not speak the name. Suddenly, he’s terrified.  
“He’s the other dot; the Time Lord DNA, it’s his…”, says Martha, hoping for an answer. “D’you know him, then?”, she presses him.  
He can’t tear his eyes from the man’s face. His features, at once so strange and so familiar…  
Something draws his attention to the man’s fist; it’s clutched in a death grip round some sort of metallic device. He squints, trying to have a better look without alarming Martha. _Rassilon almighty_. A metallic device identical to the one that has been lying for so many months in his pockets. The device he found on Lampsa.  
A new wave of dread and fear wash over him. But they’ve lingered too long. Donna is in danger. In very great danger, unless he acts fast. He shakes his head, as a lump forms in his throat. “Come on. We need to get going.”  
As they walk to the TARDIS, the Doctor throws one last glance at the man, a shiver of dread-and hope-running up his spine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, things aren't going to sort themselves, we've a bit more to go through, but it'll be worth it, I promise!


	17. Chapter 17

Τhe Doctor strides through the TARDIS corridors quickly. His mind is still on the unconscious man a few feet away from Donna… The unconscious man with Time Lord DNA… The man gripping the device full of Time Lord technology. A shiver runs up his spine. How can he not know about this device? Yet there is obviously more than one.  
…or is there? He nearly stops in his tracks. But the thought of Donna in danger is stronger than his astonishment, so he walks on.  
What if-and this is mental if it’s accurate-what if there is only one device, only he’s seen it in two different points of its timeline? Past and future. It makes sense. It’s the only thing that makes sense. And the man? What’s he got to do with it? Can he be a Time Lord? What does he want from Donna?  
All this passes in a nanosecond through his brain. But once he reaches the Med Bay, Martha at his heels, anything other than Donna disappears from his mind.  
He’s put the TARDIS in the Vortex, and Jack and Tom have laid her on the medical bed. She looks peaceful. The thought scares him.  
He stands by her side. He stares into her face. Keenly aware of the three pairs of eyes watching him with baited breath, he resists the urge to brush the fringe from her forehead.  
Oh, how he’s missed her. His magnificent Donna. _Oi, don’t you get all soppy on me, Spaceman_ , he can almost hear her berating him, while blushing just a tiny bit. He sobers up. He has work to do. “So”, he begins, calmness settling over his features, “how is she?”  
“She’s out of danger”, answers Tom. “Her heart’s functioning properly, thank God, but her brain is going berserk”, he says, showing the Doctor a scan he just did.  
The Doctor frowns at the graph, and turns his gaze once again to Donna.  
This time, he doesn’t focus on her features. He looks beyond her face. There is something… He can’t exactly place it, but there is something about Donna… Something cosmic…  
“Her mind is burning up”, he whispers, his searching eyes never leaving her face.  
“So how come she’s…”  
Martha never finishes that sentence. She doesn’t dare. And she doesn’t need to.  
“Well, her brain is evolving, becoming the brain of a Time Lord, as you saw from the brain scans. It’s stronger, more resilient”, says the Doctor. “But it has not evolved enough. I don’t know how much longer her brain will last… I need to wipe her mind again.”  
“But…”, Martha starts.  
“I’ll go along with the plan, separate my consciousness from hers, keep her own memories intact”, he says, finally looking at Martha.  
She knows how dangerous it is. She knows he’s not fully prepared to attempt it. The grim lines around his mouth, and the serious look in his eyes tell her all she needs to know: he is going to do it anyway. And he sure as hell will succeed.  
She nods slowly. The Doctor’s attention returns to Donna. He raises his hands, and gently places them on her temples. As his fingertips gently touch her skin, he closes his eyes.  
It takes a mere second to immerse himself in her mind. This time, he doesn’t scram through her memories, quickly erasing anything relevant to their time together.  
No. He reigns himself in, careful not to pry on her past, or her innermost thoughts.  
He feels his own consciousness in her mind prodding him, mingled as it is with hers. He’s felt it before. He chooses not to linger on the sensation.  
Focusing hard, and fighting the emotion in his chest, he searches her memory for the moment he wiped her mind. It’s not difficult to find; she’d been thinking about it intently since his regeneration energy knocked her out cold in the alley.  
 _“Look at me. Donna, look at me!”_ , he hears himself saying.  
His eyes snap open. He’s no longer standing in the TARDIS Med Bay, but rather in the console room. And there, across of him, he sees… himself. Shaken, and sad beyond measure, hopeless, intense eyes staring right back at him.  
He sees himself through Donna’s eyes.  
He shakes his head, and freezes the memory before it can go on any further. Carefully, he starts walking backwards.  
Her memories pass over him in a haze, blurred and disconnected as they are. Bad Wolf Bay, the Dalek Crucible exploding, Super temp! And suddenly, her memories become her own. He is not a part of them. Well, technically, Handy is, but not him. He’s in uncharted waters.  
Yet on he goes, carefully  searching, looking for the moment it all started.  
And suddenly, he’s standing in the darkened TARDIS. He feels the horror she felt  as the doors closed, before breaking into a run towards them. He hears himself shouting his name in her distressed voice.  
“No!”, he says, and the memory freezes once again.  
He gulps big lungfuls of air down his chest. Because he can see what she saw. He can hear what she heard. He can feel what she felt. Her agony is his now.  
He composes himself, and lets the memory play out in his head. He is close, he knows it. He has to be strong. Endure it all.  
His lips curl with grim determination.  
She shouts, she screams, she kicks. He can feel her fear, her terror, all the while the TARDIS is falling, falling, falling through the Crucible, all the way down to its Core. He recalls how he felt all too well. It’s a memory that’ll haunt him till the end of time. But this-her fear, her pain, her agony-is so much worse.  
She hears the heart beat. Strong and steady, it beats in her head, inviting her. He feels her need to touch his chopped off hand, he feels the compulsion she felt.  
She stretches out her hand to his. The golden aura of regeneration energy envelops her. And a very naked Handy appears out of nowhere.  
He knows he’s found it; the moment his consciousness got into her mind. He doesn’t need to live her memories any longer, he can stop now. He suddenly realises he can’t react. He’s paralysed, lost as he is for once in her feelings, in her thoughts, in her mind.  
As he watches his human self commandeer the TARDIS, and Donna, out of harm’s way, he gets the sudden, overwhelming urge to hug him fiercely.  
All the while he’s watching his human counterpart react with Donna, he gets a strange feeling. It’s not his own emotion, it can’t be, because it’s not inside him. It surrounds him. It’s Donna’s feeling. And as Handy voices it, it hits him with the force of a bullet: it’s how Donna _always_ feels, every waking moment of her life.  
 _“You think you’re not worth it.”_  
 _Oh, Donna Noble._  
All this time they spent together, and she thought he’d rather have someone else along. She thought she didn’t deserve the amazing life she was living. His hearts skip a beat each, and he feels his throat dry. _Oh, Donna, I failed you…_  
He chokes up. His magnificent Donna… Not knowing… Not having a clue…  
His human self draws him out of his self-loathing reverie.  
 _“It’s like… we were always heading for this.”_  
Oh, all this time, he has been so blind.  
 _“Something's been drawing us together for such a long time.”_  
All of this, everything, it was all meant to happen. It was designed, planned. But by whom?  
 _“It's still not finished. It's like the pattern's not complete. The strands are still drawing together. But heading for what?”_  
And he realises exactly what is so cosmic about Donna. Timelines converge around her. Even now. Her part in the history of the entire universe is not yet over.  
The realisation startles him. _But look at what happened the previous time…_  
He jolts back into his own mind, and he stumbles backwards into the Med Bay.  
He’s been so sure that he’ll succeed. But what if… What if he fails?  
He gulps air into his lungs, and looks horrified at Donna. How can he save her now? How can he bring her memories back? And what will that mean for her? For him? For the universe?  
What if this time she dies?  
His hands shake.  
“Doctor? What is it? What’s the matter?”, demands Martha.  
She gets no reply. The Doctor is staring in pure terror at his own hands, oblivious to her questions.  
“Doctor!”  
“I can’t, I just, I can’t…”, he mumbles, frightened. “I got it all wrong, all wrong…”  
“Get it right NOW then!”, Martha shouts, keenly aware of time ticking away dangerously.  
Before he gets a chance to reply, the mournful sound of a ringing bell fills the TARDIS.  
The Doctor’s head snaps to the ceiling.  
“What’s that noise?”, asks Martha.  
“The TARDIS cloister bell…”, murmurs the Doctor.  
“The what?”  
“The cloister bell… It rings whenever the old girl senses danger…”  
He’s cut off mid-sentence, as the TARDIS suddenly thrashes violently, throwing all four of them off balance.  
“Doctor, what the hell was that?”, asks Jack, as the TARDIS thrashes again.  
Donna nearly falls off the medical bed, but the Doctor catches her, and gently places her head back on the little pillow.  
He looks intently at Jack.  
“This can’t be happening, we’re parked in the Vortex… Unless…”  
“Unless _what_?”, demands Jack.  
“Unless someone’s pulling us through time and space to a specific point in the space-time continuum. But that’s impossible…”  
“Doesn’t feel like it”, shouts Jack, as the TARDIS thrashes once again, and Tom ends up rolling on the floor.  
“Whomever it is, the TARDIS doesn’t like it… She thinks we’re in danger…”  
He doesn’t mention that they probably are. In very serious danger. The unconscious man’s face flickers for a second before his eyes.  
“We need to stabilise the TARDIS, stop going to wherever it is they’re pulling us to!”, he shouts over all the racket.  
In the chaos, he tries to keep Donna’s form as the centre of his attention.  
Her body convulses, and she gasps for breath. She’s coming round-and not in a good way.  
“Donna!”, he shouts.  
He has to act. Now.  
“Jack, Tom! Go to the console room, navigate us to a safe place-not the Vortex, we can’t hide there anymore. Martha, go with them, make sure…”  
“I’m staying here”, she says determined.  
The Doctor shakes his head resigned, not having the time to deal with her.  
Jack and Tom leave the Med Bay running.  
 _Come on, Donna_ , he thinks, and carefully balances on his feet. _Come on, please… I can’t… You can’t…_ He touches his fingertips back on her temples, this time not so gently.  
This time, he knows exactly what to look for. But the writhing of the TARDIS in the Vortex is making it nearly impossible to focus. The Time Lord consciousness is gaining ground inside her head, threatening to burst her brain. Time is running out.  
He is quick. He finds the beginning of the thread. Carefully, as if disentangling two fragile glass fibres that are tightly entwined around each other, he separates his memories from hers. On and on he goes, till they are two independent entities. His own mind absorbs the excess of Time Lord memories.  
It’s done.  
He opens his eyes. The Med Bay surrounds him once more. Glass containers are falling from the sterile shelves on the floor and shattering in a thousand pieces. Martha struggles to keep her balance and avoid the rain of medical supplies falling from their storage shelves. But he’s only got eyes for Donna. Uncertain, he removes his fingers from her temple.  
With a start, she opens her eyes.


	18. Chapter 18

Time stands still as Donna slowly opens her eyes and stares at the ceiling. The Doctor holds his breath, trembling. His hearts beat frantically in his chest, suddenly willing to be free of its cage like confines. The noise dims to the background, insignificant as it is compared to Donna’s calm breathing. The only indications he has that they haven’t both been suspended out of time and space into nothingness is the violent thrashing of the TARDIS in the Vortex.  
Slowly, she sits up on the medical bed, unperturbed by the chaos surrounding her. The Doctor feels his jaw slacken and fall open in awe. He’s vaguely aware of Martha’s widened eyes. He doesn’t realise he’s still holding his breath. Waiting.  
She turns, a hair’s breadth away from him, and looks him straight in the eye. His hands tremble slightly at her piercing blue gaze. Recognition and remembrance flare at its depths.  
A sob chokes her, and she throws her arms around him in a tight embrace. Relief washes over the Doctor. She’s recognised him. She knows who he is. She’s all right. It worked.  
She’s back.  
His arms circle her back, and he’s hugging her as tightly as she is, cherishing the tingling of her ginger mane against his nose.  
 _Oh, Rassilon, she’s back. It worked. She’s remembered._  
But, no matter how much they disregard a kicking and screaming Type 40 TARDIS, the fact remains that they’re having a rather bumpy journey through the Vortex. They are thrown off balance, and end up on the floor, limbs tangled, screaming.  
Somehow, Donna finds herself on top of the Doctor.  
Donna stands on her feet, and offers a helping hand at the Doctor. He accepts it, and stands upright. And that is when she slaps him. Hard.  
“Oh, I will _kill_ you for that!”, she shouts on the top of her lungs, partly to be heard over all the noise, partly because she’s recalled exactly how angry she is.  
“Why, what’ve I done?”, he asks, genuinely flabbergasted, before he has the chance to dip his tongue in his mind, and remember precisely what it is he’s done.  
It takes a single killer stare to remind him.  
“Oh, right. Yes. Well.”  
“Doctor!”, shouts Martha. “The TARDIS!”  
The killer stare is still firmly directed at him as he tries to make his way to Martha. An arm blocks his way.  
“This ain’t over, not by a long shot, Spaceman”, says Donna, jabbing her finger in his chest.  
As soon as she turns to follow Martha, he breaks into a smile. She really is back.  
In spite of the urgency of the situation, Martha can’t really stop herself from hugging Donna.  
“And you, missy…”, starts Donna irritably.  
“Later”, says Martha, taking the Doctor by the hand, and dragging him to the console room, Donna trudging behind.  
It’s not easy, moving through the TARDIS corridors as it tosses.  
“What’s going on?”, shouts Donna.  
“Looks like someone’s dragging us out of the Vortex”, he shouts back at her.  
“You _what_? Is that even possible?”  
“No, it should be impossible.”  
 _Well, unless you’re a Time Lord, or a Dalek…_ , he thinks, and he shudders. Who could hijack the TARDIS from a distance, commandeering it against its will?  
They finally reach the console room, panting from the sheer effort of staying upright in the swaying spaceship.  
“Doctor!”, shouts Jack, his breath hitching a little at the sight of Donna, awake and furious. “Would very much appreciate a hand!”  
The two of them set to work stabilising the TARDIS into the Vortex, and then moving out of the way. _Yup, that should do the trick_ , the Doctor thinks, as he sets the coordinates somewhere in the vicinity of Alpha Centauri.  
Calmness is restored, and the old girl whirs with relief. He raises his eyes from the console, and, across the room, he sees Tom and Martha fussing over Donna. She’s slapping their hands away. He can’t help the stupid smile that spreads on his lips. She’s back. She’s remembered. She’s _alive_. Their eyes lock from across the room. For a split second, his heart beats quicken. But then her expression turns thunderous, and the moment’s gone. His smile disappears instantly.  
“Oi! Skinny Martian!”, she says, moving towards him, anger bubbling out of every pore of her skin. “Which part of ‘I wanna stay’ did you not understand exactly?!”  
She starts shouting. A wave of frustration and anger spills out of her, all of it directed at him. He lets her shout. The universe knows he deserves it. But it feels good, to hear her voice angry at him for what he did. Oh, it feels heavenly. Because she remembers. She puts up a fight. She’s back.  
The stark contrast of the silent TARDIS-empty for so long-to her angry, breathless voice resonating in the console room fills his hearts with joy.  
He listens to her unflinching. His eyes never leave hers. He waits, basking at every single insult she hurls his way. Once she’s finished, and her breaths come ragged and deep from all the shouting, he crosses his arms over his chest.  
“If I hadn’t done what I did, you wouldn’t be here now”, he says quietly. “You would’ve been dead, and I’d never see you again. I’d never have the chance to bring you back, to make it right. We’d never have this second chance…”  
She looks affronted. Her mouth hangs open in anger. She leans back, raising her hands.  
“You win this round, sunshine. But you still ain’t off the hook.”  
He nods sternly to show his understanding. To pacify her. They catch each other’s eye, and matching grins break across their faces, melting away all the tension of their long separation. Within a nanosecond, they are in each other’s arms, fiercely embracing, basking in each other’s scent, making sure that all of this is really happening.  
They stay like that long enough to hear the uncomfortable shifting of Martha, Tom, and Jack. With tightly closed eyes as he is, the Doctor cannot know if they’re discreetly averting their eyes to what with each passing moment feels like a very intimate moment, or no. Yet he is unwilling to let go. Unconsciously, he hugs Donna tighter against his chest. The silence is broken by Tom.  
“Maybe we should…”, he hears him whisper, but he never gets a chance to finish his sentence.  
The cloister bell starts tolling mournfully, eerily echoing through the console room, the empty corridors, the infinite, still rooms.  
Then the thrashing starts again. The Doctor and Donna tumble down. Unwillingly, the Doctor lets his hands fall from Donna’s back, and quickly crawls to the console. It’s not an easy journey, brief though it is. His hearts clench tightly as he hauls himself upright. Fear courses through his veins. He catches a glimpse of fiery red hair.  
No, he thinks. He focuses on the knobs and levers before him, his teeth bared in fierce concentration. He tries. Rassilon knows, he tries.  
“Come on!”, he shouts, whacking the monitor, hoping against hope it will obey him.  
It’s no use. The TARDIS is no longer under his control. She whirs in protest, fighting back, resisting.  
“Doctor, what the hell’s going on?”, demands Martha.  
“I can’t stabilise the TARDIS!”  
“What?!”  
He keeps pressing buttons. Nothing happens. Nothing can happen now anyway. There’s nothing he can do anymore. No. _No._ He rakes his hands through his hair in desperation.  
“I cant-I can't regain control…”  
He can’t even try any longer. He holds onto the console for dear life, as the TARDIS twists and turns, falling, falling, falling towards Rassilon knows where. He feels her consciousness terrified. He tries to soothe her, knowing he can’t succeed, not when when the same worries and fears haunt him too.  
But the falling stops. The TARDIS stands still. For a moment, all is silent and unmoving. Shaken, the Doctor rises, looking around, face set in a deep frown. The cloister bell resumes its tolling. He runs to the doors, and swings them hastily open. He must see what lies beyond.  
Only, there is nothing to see, expect endless blackness. It’s a shallow, artificial blackness. Not the vast, infinite blackness of space. The Doctor extends his foot out of the TARDIS, a testing toe searching for ground. He finds it. He steps out, and jumps up and down twice, thrice, before he can form an expert opinion.  
“Earth”, he mutters, turning to look back into the TARDIS.  
The others are just getting a grip of their bearings, and carefully stand on their feet.  
But before he can explore the deep, fake darkness any further, hands creep around him, and drag him down to the steely, hard floor. He fights. He kicks and thrashes, shouting. To no avail. The hands are too strong, too determined.  
“Doctor!”, he hears Donna shout, and his blood runs cold.  
No. He will protect her this time, whatever it takes. He is not losing her again. No.  
He keeps his mouth shut, teeth bared with the sheer effort to not call out her name. He struggles to reach his breast pocket, fighting at the same time to keep the hands from knocking the breath out of him. He manages to get his screwdriver out. He points it through the TARDIS doors, that are still ajar, onto the takeoff lever, and presses. The TARDIS cooperates willingly. The old girl shuts the door with a thud, and takes off, whooshing. Donna’s anxious, shocked face is the last thing he sees before the TARDIS disappears into thin air. One of the hands tackling him reaches for his temple. In a mere nanosecond, he is unconscious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nope, not done with the intense chapters. ;)


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: the Doctor is tortured. Cheese ensues. Badass Donna.

His eyes burst open, and he takes a great lungful of air, as if having just reached the surface of the water after a long dive in the sea. His breath takes a while to go back to normal. His eyes adjust almost instantly. Light surrounds him. _Odd_ , the Doctor thinks. He lost consciousness in total, shallow blackness.  
He focuses more closely. He realises the light is generated in its entirety by a single lamp, aimed directly at his eyes. It is enveloped in the same, shallow blackness in which he fainted.  
“I really thought I’d done you in this time”, comes a calm, velvet voice.  
He turns his head, and sees a man with deep blue eyes, framed by black-rimmed glasses, staring at him. The man he found unconscious a few feet away from Donna in that alley. The man with Time Lord technology in his fist. The man with Time Lord DNA.  
He swallows thickly. He knows exactly what’ll happen next.  
“How did you dupe me this time, then?”, he asks.  
The man shrugs, as a lopsided smile spreads across his lips.  
“Waited till you were out of my way to regenerate.”  
“I burnt you… I saw you burn to ashes.”  
“You saw what you wanted to see, Doctor. As usual.”  
The Doctor’s jaw tenses. Anger is bubbling in his chest.  
“You let me believe I was the only one left. Again.” His voice is brittle. “You let me believe your blood was on my hands.”  
“Oh, stop being such a drama queen, Doctor. You’ll get over it pretty well, as you always do.”  
The Doctor makes to move, only to find his hands and feet inhibited by tight ropes. “A little rich, that, coming from you, Master. You always fancied yourself as my assassin. You’re a bit rubbish at it, I must say…”  
Something flares, dangerous, ready to take over, deep in the Master’s eyes.  
“That from the man who appointed himself guardian of the universe…”, he whispers. “Tell me”, he asks, “is your hero complex so great, you created a god-like hybrid, revered across the universe? Or do you tell yourself you did that by accident?”  
The Doctor’s breath hitches in his throat. This regeneration never had a pokerface, but he struggles to keep his cool anyway. He must. So much depends on it. He stares defiantly at the Master. He has no idea what he’s talking about. But hiding that fact might be the only reason both he and Donna are still alive.  
“Where is the DoctorDonna, Doctor?”  
 _Dead_ , he thinks with fierce joy, Donna’s clear, remembering eyes vividly alive in his mind. _Kaput. Finito. Gone_.  
But what of the god-like hybrid? Can the DoctorDonna’s short existence really have passed into legend, as the Master claims?  
He suddenly realises that he has no knowledge of his future. That perhaps things happen that he cannot even imagine. That this time, the Master knows more than he does.  
He refuses to answer. Defiantly, he keeps his mouth shut. But his mind wanders, far and wide. This moment feels very concrete. As if it is inevitable. As if it always has been. As if this, no matter what, always happens.  
Oh. This is a fixed point in time.  
Anger crumples the Master’s face, eager as it is to crack open his calm facade and flood his very being.  
“Doctor, this time I really don’t want to hurt you. All I want from you is to tell me where the DoctorDonna is.”  
“That is something I cannot tell”, he replies.  
He is deadly serious. He doesn’t fully understand the danger, but he is not risking anything. There is no arguing, no persuading, no changing his mind. It isn’t just his fate that’s at stake. Not even just the fate of the universe. It’s Donna’s fate. And he is done gambling with it. The hard lines around his eyes and his mouth tell as much.  
Rage twists the Master’s face. It isn’t the Doctor’s refusal that enrages him. He had expected that. It’s the realisation that, no matter what he does to the Doctor, he will never tell him what he wants. He’ll die before he breathes a word.  
Chocked by the white-hot anger ringing through his veins, he screams. He slams his hands on the Doctor’s temples. It’s not long before the Doctor starts screaming as well. Only his screams are pure agony.  
Physical pain like he has never felt before is coursing through his body. Every single atom of his being is enveloped in searing pain. He wishes he’ll regenerate. No, he wishes he’ll die. There are no words to describe the pain. Is he conscious? He cannot tell. He’s lost any track of his physical form. Where do his limbs end and the floor begins? Is the blinding light he sees the sun? Or is the pain so great, he’s hallucinating? How long has he been staring at it?  
He realises he’s lost track of time. In the daze of the torturing pain, he is still amazed; the lord of time, losing track of it. He’s getting tired of all the irony in his life. He just wants it all to end.  
He screams. It is not a physical scream. He’s not certain he still possesses a physical form. The pain, almost a joy to feel now, so intense and pure and strong and unrelenting, is the only thing real.  
The blinding light gets a reddish hue. It swirls, the pain getting worse than ever, if that is even possible, and suddenly he’s looking at Donna’s tear-stricken face as she begs him to let her die rather than forget their time together. He wishes he was dead. He’s certain that, if his body is still conscious, it’s screaming blue murder.  
“Donna…”  
He whispers it? He thinks it? He screams it? He cannot tell. All he knows is that all their time together is happening at once. From the moment she materialised in the TARDIS to the epic slap she gave him after coming round. Partners in crime, Pompeii, Pyrovilia, Ood Sigma, Your song is ending, We’re not a couple, You hug him you get a paper cut, Dad shock, I’m all right too, There’s always a reason to live, Oh that’s too salty, Find someone, I need to do this more often, I had to destroy them all, You dumbo, I’m tired, The best of times, the best, Pockets!  
Every single moment, every precious second resounds throughout the universe. Donna Noble. It hovers in the vortex, it touches everyone. Every single being that has been, is, or will be. The DoctorDonna echoing through all of time and space.  
And then he realises. All this time, all he’s seen, or done, or thought. All that he’s encountered ruling it out as coincidence. All this time. It was him. Always him. The DoctorDonna is him. Clues for himself scattered like breadcrumbs. If he wasn’t already dying from pain, he’d have been breathless.  
“Donna…”  
Her image, standing once again in the TARDIS, slowly becoming a Time Lady as she is, fills him up to the brim, and the pain, just for a second, becomes bearable.  
Oh, of course. _Of course_. The Master has always been an idiot like that.  
Because he doesn’t realise that physical pain in not so bad. You hurt, you shout, you cry, and then it’s just a memory. But emotional pain-loss, heart break, guilt-is all-encompassing. It chokes the life out of you, till there is nothing left, but a shell that resembles you and breathes through your lungs. It occupies every waking moment of your life. It follows you around, and clings to your skin like a disease.  
All these months without Donna, choking in his own misery and bile, not daring to do anything, terrified to even see her lest he should cause her harm. And, in stark contrast, the bright future of travelling alongside her. Her constant presence in the TARDIS for the rest of eternity.  
Oh, Donna… Understanding him like no one ever has. And not realising just how magnificent she is. His Donna. Donna Noble. The Most Important Woman in the Universe. Not just for a moment. Always.  
The pain subsides. The DoctorDonna still resounds through the universe. A message of hope. Because he is now filled with that which he lost when he wiped Donna’s mind; hope. For his future. Their future. _There’s always something worth living for. You were right. I need someone. You._

* * *

  
Jack holds her tightly to his chest, not allowing her a hair’s breadth of movement.  Even though she knows there is no getting away from his strong grip, Donna still wriggles in a vain attempt to be free.  
“Doctor!”, she shouts at the shutting doors.  
Too late. The TARDIS has already taken off.  
“No! Oi, let go of me, let go! No!”  
Only when the TARDIS is safely in the Vortex does Jack relax his steely embrace. Donna runs to the door. She tries to open it. She can’t.  
She jumps back when she feels a mind stroking her own. An equally agitated mind. Only it’s whispering that there was nothing they could do to help the Doctor if they remained on Earth.  
The TARDIS. The realisation makes her gasp.  
“What just happened?”, asks Tom, perplexed.  
“The Doctor activated the emergency take-off”, Jack explains.  
“Why? What’s the matter?”  
“He’s in danger”, says Martha. “We were all in danger. He’s being the Doctor; get the others out of danger first”, she shrugs.  
“Yeah, well, not on my watch!”, Donna shouts, more to the TARDIS than anyone.  
“We’re stuck in the Vortex”, says Jack, crossing his arms over his chest. “The Doctor’s made sure my Vortex Manipulator is useless. There’s nothing we can do…”, he claims dejectedly.  
Donna’s mind is racing, buzzing with the million fears and worries that have suddenly materialised there in order to torture her. They seem to have multiplied since the last time she’d encountered the Doctor’s stubborn selfishness. Yet her brain feels clearer. What’s changed?  
Sick with worry, she looks around, desperately looking to her surroundings for a way to help the stupid prawn. The TARDIS whirs gently, and strokes her mind again. Suddenly, her frantic gaze falls on the levers of the console.  
 _Of course._  
In two strides, she’s in front of the levers. She hesitates. She can’t do it. She’ll never make it. She’ll never save him. She’ll only make matters worse. _You will never know until you try. Unless you do this, the Doctor will surely perish._ She hears the TARDIS, clear and loud, in her mind. Her fear increases tenfold, but now is not the time for self doubt. The old girl is right, as always. There is no other choice. Because leaving the Doctor to his fate simply isn’t one. She takes a deep breath, and places her right hand on the lever of take-off, as the other inches towards the coordinates knob.  
 _I’m gonna need your help with this_ , she thinks, and can feel the old girl’s consent.  
“What are you doing?”, asks Martha, suddenly by her side, a determined look to help in her face.  
“Saving the Doctor”, she mutters, putting in the coordinates in time and space the TARDIS has calculated that they must go to. “You forget, dumbo. I know how to fly the TARDIS”, she smiles, forcefully pulling the lever that launches them towards the Doctor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming next: a dollop of dark Doctor, with awesome Donna holding him to the mark! Stay tuned, and don't forget to drop a comment!


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woop, woop! Exams are finally over! Here's a (delayed) chapter in celebration. Enjoy!

His senses explode back into existence. The pain diminishes. Slowly, slowly, oh so slowly, it subsides. It becomes two points on his head, one on each temple. But as the pain dies, a strength is born. A strength he has not known he is capable of.  
Donna. He focuses on Donna.  
The strength builds, the pain retreats to where the Master’s hands touch his head. His eyes snap open.  
The blue of the Master’s eyes is now marred by pain, his brow creased with terror. His face is screaming ‘What’s going on?’.  
The Doctor pushes on, focusing more and more of the strength he now possesses to the Master. The pain is leaving his body. Leaving it the only way it can. Leaving the way it came. Back into the Master’s hands. They are burning now. And the strength bursts out of the Doctor. His lips curl in fierce concentration, in savage anger.  
The Master keels to the floor, as pain, the pain he caused the Doctor, swallows him up whole. Gone is the rage. Fear and pain course through his veins. His black-rimmed glasses sit askew on his nose. He opens his mouth, not to sneer or goad, but to scream a scream of pure, undiluted terror.  
The Doctor rises. His hands fly to the Master’s wrists. With great force, he detaches them from his temples, teeth bared with the effort. The pain abruptly stops, and the strength, the energy pulsates through his very being. He could run around the Equator, he could swim across the Pacific Ocean, or climb Everest, and the strength, the energy inside him wouldn’t be extinguished. He looks down to the Master, whimpering in pain on his knees as he is. He grips his hands, the hands that are still burning, with a vice. He finds it hard to breathe, knowing now all that he does. It’s impossible to hold back the fury, now that it’s set loose.  
“How scared, how terrified you must’ve been to even attempt this, eh?”, he snarls, his hands shaking, but never, ever loosening their grip on the Master’s wrists. “You know my future, you’ve seen the DoctorDonna, and it’s more than legend. It’s reality. And that scares you enough to mess with a fixed point in time? Did you learn _nothing_ , all these years at the Academy, or travelling around the Universe? Or where you so desperate you were willing to risk it? Well, let me tell you once more: _Time always reasserts itself_.”  
The Master looks at him, breathless with agony. His hands resist the pressure the Doctor is putting on them, remaining unmovable. But for how long he can hold on, the Doctor cannot tell. No matter. He can wait. He has the strength to win. And he knows it.  
“How much did you dread it, to come after us? Eh? To create technology to track down our names whenever and wherever they are spoken? Because that’s what that stellar computer actually does. It receives sound waves. Not transmit them. You’re searching for the DoctorDonna through all of time and space… That photo, that singed photo I found on Lampsa, that was me with her-in the future…”  
The Master’s hands weaken. He knows the Doctor well enough to realise there is no star, no constellation where he can hide from his fury now. Dismay radiates out of his eyes. Yet his mouth is set, still fighting to keep his own. He cannot last much longer, and the Doctor knows that. _Good._  
“But what you saw isn’t the DoctorDonna. I am the DoctorDonna.” His voice is low, calm and very dangerous. His hands still tremble with his silent fury, but they are slowly gaining ground. “What you saw is the Doctor and Donna. And you should be a million times more worried than you already are. Because no harm will come to her. Not anymore. Not in a million years. D’you hear me?”  
The Master groans in concentration, struggling to put up a fight. His strength returns for a moment. But it is not enough.  
“I am the DoctorDonna”, he whispers in the Master’s ear. “I made all of it happen. And she’s a Time Lady now. This always happens. No matter what you do, this always happens. You thought you could hurt me. You thought you could get to her-to us! You’ve always been thick like this. Because you thought the pain you caused me would break me. It didn’t. It made me powerful. More powerful than I’ve ever been. My mind hovered over the entire Universe. And I made it all happen.”  
“Like a god…”, the Master breathes.  
Under normal circumstances, he would’ve been shocked by himself. Not now. Now, he’s angry, angrier than he’s ever been. And he accepts his divinity.  
“Yes, like a god.”  
His hands move closer to the Master, as his arms’ strength slowly abandons him.  
“And now you will face my wrath.”

* * *

Donna runs around the console, frantic in her attempt to be quick and get everything right. Martha and Jack are towing her, helping out, following her instructions. They dare not question or disobey her. Tom stands out of the way, watching all the movement in bewilderment.  
Martha stops navigating, and stares at the monitor, a frown slowly taking over her face.  
“What is it? What’s the matter?”, asks Jack, struggling to keep the TARDIS stably on course now that Martha’s stopped helping out.  
“We aren’t moving…”, comes Martha’s slightly panicked reply.  
“You _what_?”, Donna shouts.  
“We’re right back where we were… Where the Doctor activated the emergency take-off… I mean, we travelled to the Vortex but now we’re back at the same point. And we aren’t moving in space.”  
Jack and Donna cram each side of Martha in order to have a proper look at the monitor themselves.  
“We’re only moving through time, look!”, says Martha, pointing at the coordinates, that remain stubbornly the same.  
“But… I don’t understand… The Doctor sent us away, how can we still be…”, mutters Donna, utterly perplexed.  
The TARDIS touches Donna’s mind soothingly. _Trust me, I am bringing you back. He needs you. Now more than ever._  
Donna takes a shuddering breath. She braces herself.  
“Okay, we do as the TARDIS says”, she announces. “No travelling through space, same coordinates, just hurtle to his future.”  
“Have you got a plan?”, asks Jack.  
“No”, she replies affronted. “But I think-I hope-the old girl knows what she’s doing. I’ve a feeling I’ll know what to do once we get there.”  
Jack and Martha exchange a look. Their worried faces are more reassuring than her own thoughts. _Oh, please let me get it right_ , she begs the TARDIS as she gets to work once more.

* * *

His palms, still closed fiercely round the Master’s wrists, are sweaty, but he doesn’t give up. Not now. The Master’s arms have lost the battle. Now his open palms, the ones that caused the Doctor such agony, are on either side of his head. The Doctor, his teeth bared with manic concentration, starts pushing the Master’s hands closed. Slowly, carefully. Till a hair’s breadth separates his palms from his temples.  
The torture he inflicted on the Doctor still pulsates through his hands, and as he realises what the Doctor intends to do, with the cry of the last push of a dying man, he resists. But it is in vain. The Doctor has almost won. And what a terrible victory this blinding rage has made it.  
So intense is his anger, that he cannot hear anything other than the Master’s laboured breath. Not even the whooshing sound of the TARDIS landing. Not the creaking of the TARDIS doors swinging open. Not the thundering footsteps, or the cries of surprise. Nothing.  
So when he hears Donna’s pleading voice by his side, he thinks he’s hallucinating.  
“Doctor… No.”  
His face is hard. He shakes his head imperceptibly.  
“You can stop now…”  
“No, no, he nearly… He could’ve…”  
“Please, Doctor… Enough… Just stop…”  
His progress has halted. He cannot go on. He turns his head, and stares straight into Donna’s soft, pleading eyes.  
“But he could’ve killed you…”  
“I know…”, she says. Tentatively, she raises her hand, and gently lays it on his shoulder. “I know…”  
And the Doctor realises that this answer would’ve followed anything he said. No matter what the cause of his anger, Donna would’ve understood, and would’ve tried to stop him anyway.  
His eyes turn to the Master again, small, writhing with fear on his knees. All his will for revenge dies. He lets go of his hands, and they drop to the Master’s side. The Doctor rises, straightens his suit, and feels more alive than he ever has.  
“Go”, he says to the Master. “We will meet again soon enough.”  
He turns, and slowly walks towards the TARDIS, followed by Donna.

 

 

 

 

 


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive the delay, but I promise it's worth it... Enjoy! ;)

The TARDIS doors close behind them, and the Doctor strides to the console, eager to leave that place as soon as possible.  
“No, wait!”, cries Donna, her eyes wide.  
“What is it? What’s happened?”, asks Jack.  
“Ood Sigma, he… He was there, in the alley! _He_ made me remember! He was wounded!”, says Donna, suddenly remembering. “We need to help him!”  
The Doctor nods sternly, and with swift movements, navigates the TARDIS. Within moments, they have landed. Donna storms to the door, followed by Martha, Tom and Jack.  
The Doctor sits back and watches as Tom and Jack carry Ood Sigma through the doors. His waxen complexion worries the Doctor. _Tortured by the Master for information on the DoctorDonna…_ But he is too drained to do anything more.  
Once the TARDIS doors are shut once more, he sets the old girl into the vortex, and makes his way to the Med Bay, where the others have moved Ood Sigma, and are tending to him.  
He finds Donna in the corridor outside, watching as Tom and Martha, with the help of Jack, try to stabilise him. Martha looks up for a second from her task, and sees the Doctor approaching, and gives him an encouraging smile that unnerves him. Before he can ask himself why, Donna has turned, and her full attention is on him.  
“How are you?”, she asks, a wan smile appearing on her lips.  
“All right. As always.”  
“No, you’re not…”  
“How do you always know?”  
She shrugs, and takes him into her arms for a much needed embrace. He breathes her in, and the turmoil of the last few hours somewhat fades. And unable to hold it back, he tells her everything. Of the Master’s plan to stop their future, of his intent to destroy them before they have a chance to thwart him, of the terror he felt of the possibility of her getting hurt in any way. Of her changing biology.  
She listens to him, silent, trying to make sense of all that he’s telling her. She is no longer 100% human, but only part human. And part Time Lord. Augmented life span.  Years and years and years of life, when all of her family will have perished.  
“Are you all right?”, he asks, seeing her sudden pallor.  
“Will be in a moment… This is just a bit much to take in, is all.”  
He gives her a moment to recover, fully aware of the shock she must have had.  
Suddenly, Donna’s life stretches before her, unlimited by time and space. Just last night she thought that this is it. Nine to five, unfulfilling work and friendships, trudging on in a life that simply isn’t enough. Now, the forever she’d promised herself and the Doctor is tangibly possible. But at what price?  
Seeing the turmoil in her, the Doctor frowns in worry.  
“D’you… want me to take you back? Back home?”, he asks, dreading the answer.  
“You silly prawn…”, she says, exasperated. “‘Course not. Forever, remember?”  
“Oh, good. Good. I just thought… I don’t know, maybe you don’t trust me anymore. After all… The memory wiping thing really wasn’t very good”, he finishes, grimacing and raking his hand through his hair in agitation.  
“No. It wasn’t”, she says seriously. “And do something like that again, and you’ll find yourself missing a couple of regenerations, mate. Are we clear on that?”, she asks, dangerously.  
“Very”, the Doctor nods vigorously.  
“Having said that, I understand why you did what you did. And I think I can let it go.”  
“Oh. Good, good. That’s very good.”  
“Doesn’t mean I’m not pissed still, though.”  
“No, no, of course.”  
They fall silent for a moment. The Doctor realises that still, he’s holding something back. Something important. He told her everything. Well, almost everything. Even now, he holds back on his true feelings.  
“I am so glad, Donna, so glad I found a way to bring you back…”, he says, and he nearly chokes up.  
Her hand finds his arm, and she rubs it soothingly, till he can speak again.  
“I know I never said it nearly enough… But thank you”, he says, pulling out of her arms. “Thank you for saving me once more from myself… Oh, how I’ve missed you!”, he says, and tears appear in his eyes. “You always understand, you brilliant woman, and I’ll never know how…”  
A melancholy smile breaks on his face, and Donna returns it.  
“You big, outer space dumbo…”, she mutters. “You’re not just my best mate, you know…”  
“I’m not?”, he asks, raising his eyes to her, hope slipping into his voice unbidden.  
But regret at letting this little detail escape her lips is marring her features, as she worries her bottom lip, trembling at his reaction to the slip of her tongue.  
“What I… What I meant was…”  
But the Doctor has had enough of this silly little hide-and-seek game of theirs. His breathing shallows. Adrenaline rushes through his blood. And this time, he does nothing to stop it. As Donna lowers her gaze in embarrassment, the Doctor leans forward and his lips tentatively touch hers.  
For a split second, she gasps in surprise. Her eyes widen, and she stares at him. But he has closed his eyes, and not feeling her pull away, he presses a little harder.  
She resists for a moment longer, before giving in with a sigh. Her arms circle his neck, and his her waist. She begins to respond, and the kiss deepens. It lingers.  
Donna’s brain is short circuiting. She feels a million protestations bubbling inside her chest. _Wha…? How…? Is he…? Really?_ But nothing, not the shock, not the doubts, nothing can refrain her from responding in kind, once she realises that yes, the Doctor is really kissing her. And oh, how it burns her up, makes her dizzy, fills her being now that she’s letting it.  
Falling in love with the long streak of alien nothing that currently has his hands splayed on her back, and kisses her with the manic passion he has for everything, was never meant to happen. When she started looking for him, this had been the furthest thing from her mind. She was waiting for the right man. She’d told her granddad so. Not in that way, she’d clarified. Except the Doctor became the right man in exactly that way. She was half way gone before she even realised she’d started.  
And as the kiss lingers-tender, and full of longing-she cannot help but realise that this, this right here, right now, was inevitable. The Doctor, travelling the stars, showing her places and things she had never imagined, her best mate, her silly Spaceman, convincing her again and again that she is truly brilliant, helping her find meaning in her life, could never have remained just a friend. She would never have dared to dream that maybe, just maybe, the ‘mates only’ agreement was painful for him too.  
She hugs him a little closer, and lets her hands wander into his miraculous hair. He sighs into her mouth, and doubles his efforts. But her breath is running short, and she pulls back.  
“What was _that_?”, she asks, breathless and flabbergasted.  
“What did it feel like?”  
“You don’t… Why did you…? You-you…”  
“My, my, Donna Noble lost for words… Maybe I should do this more often.”  
“Oi, don’t get smart with me, mister…”, she warns him.  
“Sorry…”  
“You don’t fancy me… You, you… You want Rose. Rose, trapped in a parallel universe!”  
He shakes his head sternly, eyebrows high in his forehead.  
“No. Not for a long time now…”  
“But… But… You said you didn’t want to complicate things… We agreed, no mating!”  
“And that was incredibly stupid of me. I-I… Well, there’s no other word for it, I love you, Donna. And the ‘no mating’ deal we made has been the only thing holding me back… I was afraid I’d scare you off, you were so adamant…”  
“I thought… I always kept back… I thought you wanted Rose… Why would you want me, when Rose was…”  
“Oh, Donna… How I’ve failed you…”, he says, shaking his head in dismay. “You are utterly, utterly magnificent! You are brilliant, and beautiful, and you have saved me from my greatest enemy; myself. You have made me a better man on so many levels… I never thought I deserve you, but I can at least try…”  
“Of course you do, you stupid, stupid prawn!”, she says, laying her hands on his chest, her voice quivering.  
He cannot help but smile a little. Maybe it was easier than he thought. This unachievable happiness.  
“Is… Is that a…”  
“Yes…”, she says, nodding, avoiding looking at him. “I love you too, you daft Martian.”  
A stupid grin spreads on his lips, and he can hold back no longer. He embraces her with a vice, and she responds in time. Whose lips find the other’s first, neither can tell for sure. All they know is that they are kissing again, hearts bursting with joy. Eternity is theirs now.  
After a minute, they separate, drawing ragged breaths. Even the Doctor has forgotten about the respiratory bypass. He’s probably forgotten his own name.  
A smirk forms on his lips as he realises that, in the end, the Master himself forced his hand in bringing back Donna’s memories, and consequently is the cause of his reunion with her. He looks at her, mischief sparkling in his eyes.  
“Next time we see the Master, remind me to thank him.”  
He suspects the joy and love he’s feeling show on his face. Donna needs a moment to understand his meaning, but when she does, she blushes just a tiny bit, and ducks her head self-consciously. She swats his arm.  
“Charmer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! Don't forget to drop a comment letting me know how you like it...
> 
> Nearly there, now, guys...


	22. Chapter 22

He’s softly chatting with Donna in the hallway when Martha comes out of the Med Bay.  
“Ood Sigma has come round”, she says to the Doctor, ignoring the fact that he is closer to Donna than strictly necessary. “He wants to speak with you. But take it easy-he’s still shaken and not fully recovered”, she goes on, in a very professional way.  
He turns his eyes to Donna, who slowly nods her encouragement. His mouth is set in a hard line as he walks into the Med Bay, and the door shuts behind him.  
Ood Sigma in lying on the bed, eyes drooping closed, his face more waxen than ever. The Doctor walks up beside him, and watches as his beady eyes slowly focus on him.  
“Doctor…”, manages the Ood.  
“Ood Sigma”, the Doctor greets him, a shiver running up his spine. Grateful as he is to him, the words ‘Your song is ending’ resound mercilessly in his mind, now that he has tasted complete happiness more than ever. “We’re taking you back to Oodsphere. Your physicians there will be able to help, more so than we are…”  
“We have succeeded in our mission”, says Ood Sigma, disregarding the Doctor’s words. “We have rescued Oodkind’s greatest friend. The DoctorDonna is secure. The most faithful of the Children of Time has died and is resurrected, greater than ever before.”  
A wan smile appears on the Doctor’s face, suddenly pallid with sadness. He chuckles.  
“Yes, you have. You protected her. You kept her safe. You caused her to remember, and my defences to kick in. And for that, I will be eternally grateful. But I am dying. My time is up. I will not…”  
“Your song has ended, Doctor, but the story never ends. A new song has begun. It echoes through time and space. And you are no longer alone in it.”  
He opens his mouth in astonishment, but no sound is articulated. The song-his lonely song-has ended. And now life stretches before him once more, travelling the universe. With Donna. His magnificent Donna.  
“Goodbye, Doctor. We shall not meet again. But Oodkind will always sing of the DoctorDonna.”  
And with that, Ood Sigma shimmers, and vanishes into thin air, leaving the Doctor dumbfounded and alone in the Med Bay.

* * *

The whirring of the TARDIS stops, and the Doctor smiles an electric smile. Since Ood Sigma shimmered out of existence, his hearts feel light, his happiness bubbles in his chest, and he could swear that his Donna has never looked more radiant. Maybe it is the shy, incredulous looks she keeps throwing his way when she thinks no one is looking.  
“Cardiff!”, shouts the Doctor. “Wales, the United Kingdom, 20 June 2009, give or take a month…”, he smiles a charming, debonair smile.  
But the console room is silent, as Martha, Tom, and Jack are suddenly reluctant to leave. Exhaustion seeps into their bones, and the need to be home is suddenly overwhelming. The Doctor notices the long face.  
“Oh, come on, don’t be like that! We’ll see you again in no time!”  
“Yeah, we all know that’s not gonna happen…”, says Martha, crossing her arms over her chest.  
“Don’t worry, Martha”, says Donna. “I’ll make sure it does.”  
“Now I feel loads better”, replies Martha with a smile.  
She turns to Tom, takes him by the hand, and moves towards the door. The Doctor and Donna share a look. The Doctor offers her his hand.  
“You’ve gone all soft…”, she chides him, but takes it anyway.  
All five step outside. The sea breeze hits their faces, as the Millennium Centre greets them.  
Martha crushes the Doctor in a bear hug, and Tom shakes him hand with a genuine smile.  
“We’ve got the wedding in a few months, don’t forget!”, says Martha.  
“‘Course he won’t”, says Donna. “Or there’ll be hell to pay. I’ve got just the dress for an autumn wedding…”  
They start walking away. Donna runs after them, taking great pains to thank them properly for their help in private. The Doctor and Jack stand side by side in front of the TARDIS doors in silence, drinking in Donna smiling, laughing, _living_.  
“Thank God you realised”, mutters Jack.  
“Pardon?”  
“Donna. It was painfully obvious to anyone with two eyes and half a brain…”  
He doesn’t look away from her. He still cannot quite believe everything that’s happened the last few hours.  
“When did you guess?”, he asks Jack.  
“From the moment I saw you together on the TARDIS, you know, that day…”, he says, and he turns to look at him. “Honestly, Doc, did you never wonder why I never hit on Donna, even though she seemed more than keen?”  
The Doctor is taken aback by this sudden question. He shifts his weight uncomfortably between his legs. His mouth falls open, in a vain attempt to form a reply. Having failed, it closes again.  
“It wasn’t for lack of interest on my part, let me tell you. That gorgeous red hair? Phsss! And don’t even get me started on her…”  
“Back to the point, Jack…”, he admonishes him, really not wanting to have this conversation. He knows exactly how that sentence would end, and if he is being completely honest, Jack really has a point…  
“I saw it was a show… She wasn’t really into it. And I won’t even mention your forlorn little face every time she tried to flirt.”  
The Doctor blushes.  
“Don’t.”  
They stand side by side in silence, as Donna hugs Martha and Tom goodbye.  
Jack claps his hand on the Doctor’s back.  
“Take care, Doctor. Of yourself, and of Donna… Oh, and if you need protection, the stash in my room should still be good, the Vortex stops the ageing process of latex…”  
“Stop it”, warns the Doctor, fighting a wry smile.  
Jack winks at him, and starts walking towards the others.  
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”, he shouts back.  
“Not exactly likely, that, is it?”, the Doctor shouts back.  
“Just sayin’…”, comes the reply, along with a lop-sided smile.  
“Oh, and Jack…”, says the Doctor, stopping his progress. “Your Vortex Manipulator”, he demands, extending his open palm.  
Jack frowns.  
“But it’s useless…”  
“Still, I’ll be needing it.”  
Reluctantly, Jack removes the Vortex Manipulator from his wrist, and hands it to the Doctor.  
“Happy?”  
The Doctor merely nods in response, and Jack walks once more towards the others.  
“All right, agent boy, this is your last chance to elope with me”, Donna shouts to Jack, as she walks back to the TARDIS.  
“Oh, Donna, I’d love to, but I’m afraid our little Time Lord friend would die of a broken heart”, comes his reply, a smile evident in his voice.  
Donna pretends to be shocked.  
“I _knew_ there was something between the two of you cheeky boys!”  
They meet halfway, laughing at their banter. Jack embraces her fiercely.  
“You two kids take care, ok?”  
“Yeah. We’ll be all right.”  
“I’m sure you will.”  
Jack smiles at her. He turns to the Doctor, and offers a salute. He sticks his hands in his pockets, and slowly walks towards the hidden entrance of Torchwood, his overcoat billowing in the gentle breeze.  
Donna reaches the Doctor, and smiles. He cannot stop himself. He opens his arms, and she gladly accepts the embrace.  
“You really are going soft, you big, outer space teddy bear…”, she mutters with a smile.  
“Can’t really help it… And I’m not gonna hold it back anymore.”  
“I’ll keep you to that”, she murmurs against his chest.

* * *

 

Once inside the TARDIS, the Doctor’s manic energy returns full force.  
“So… Next stop! Your choice!”, he shouts circling the console.  
Silence is all the reply he gets, and his blood chills in his veins. He snaps his head up to Donna. She seems sheepish, as if not knowing how to voice her thoughts.  
 _Oh_. His hearts drop to his stomach. _She wants out_. His mouth feels dryer than a desert.  
“I was wondering… The thing is, I think I should drop home… You know, give a heads up to mum and gramps, say a proper goodbye before we hit the road properly once more…”  
The Doctor exhales in relief. Donna looks at him in complete disbelief.  
“Not again…”, she says, exasperated. “How can I get this in your thick skull, Spaceman? _You’re stuck with me_.”  
He gives a dazzling smile of complete joy.  
“Best news I’ve had all week…”  
“Good. Now, can I go visit my family?”  
“Yup! Chiswick, coming right up!”  
“You sure you don’t mind?”  
“‘Course not. In fact”, he adds, as he pulls the lever for take-off, “I have a bit of business to attend to myself, while you deal with… Earth, family stuff.”  
“You’re not gonna run off, are you?”, Donna asks, worried.  
“Nah… How did you say it? Oh, yes! You’re stuck with me.”


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of River feels. Don't say I didn't warn you...

The Doctor is careful, as he enters the coordinates in the console with unusual care and precision. Still, that does not prevent him from smiling a little at a recollection. He just left Donna outside her house in Chiswick, so she could spend a day with her family before traversing the stars once again. She’d looked almost bashful as she turned back to him.  
“Oi! No disappearing, you hear me, Martian? 24 hours.”  
“Duly noted”, he promised.  
She is still afraid that he will run off, and leave her behind… He will have to take great care to make her see, make her understand as soon as possible.  
He pulls the lever with great force, and carefully commandeers the TARDIS to his destination. Once he lands, he runs to the doors, and throws them open, stepping out into-  
A tiny student hall room, with two twin beds pushed up together, and two desks crammed against the wall, books covering most of the floor, is what he sees. Two very astonished and young faces are looking at him.  
The River he sees in front of him has the wild space hair he knows, but looks no more than 25 years old. And beside her, he recognises the dark, intelligent face of her husband, Raj.  
He thinks he hears River muttering ‘finally’. He ignores it.  
“Hello, sweetie”, she greets him with her mischievous smile, ten times more devilish in her youthful face.  
“Oh, hello, River!”, he greets her back, shoving his hands down his pockets as he tries to stroll into the minuscule room with easy charm, and knocking a precarious tower of books. “Sorry to pop in like this… I hope I’m not interrupting…”  
“You are”, she replies. “A very important study session with my fiancé for our final PhD exam tomorrow. Impeccable timing, as usual. But I suspect your business is rather more important than school work…”  
“You suspect correctly.”  
Raj turns to her, resignation fogging his eyes.  
“Well, you did expect this…”  
“Yes, I did. Sit down, Doctor and make this as brief as possible.”  
And so, he does. He explains about Donna, and the metacrisis, and all that has followed.  
“I need your help”, he confesses.  
“Anything…”, comes her reply immediately.  
He takes a deep breath, and reaches for his pocket. He takes out of it Jack Harkness’ Vortex Manipulator, and a sonic screwdriver with a red tip, and a hidden compartment. A sonic screwdriver he has taken great pains to create. He gives it to her, and she looks at him perplexed.  
“You’ll need these”, is all the explanation he gives her, before instructing her about where and when she should be.  
She frowns.  
“But why would I be there? What do you need me for?”, she asks.  
“Trust me, you’ll know when the time comes. Just make sure you’re at the library at that exact moment. You have to save me from myself. I could do great harm to the entire universe if I lay hands on that book…”  
“But…”  
“River, it is better for everyone the less you’ll know. You will know then what to do. For now, all you need to know is that I will need your help more than anything.”  
She nods solemnly, fully aware of the great responsibly he has laid on her shoulders.  
“On one condition”, she suddenly says, looking at him straight in the eye.  
“Which is…”  
She rattles off a date, time, and place.  
“Be there. You’ll know what to do.”  
The Doctor looks at the young woman full of cheek and life and courage standing in front of him, demanding something in return for her invaluable help, an assistance that, ultimately, will cost her her life. How can he refuse?  
He nods slowly.  
She offers him her hand.  
“Deal?”, she asks.  
“Deal”, he answers, taking the proffered hand.  
Once they shake on their deal, he pulls her into a hug. He whispers something in her ear. His name. Once she realises what it it, she gasps. He thinks of her sacrificing herself in the library. And he cannot bear the tiny room for a moment longer.  
He pulls back, kisses her forehead, and sniffles a little.  
His eye catches the front page of River’s PhD dissertation. He stretches his hand, to have a better look.  
“Ah, ah, ah”, River says as she pushes his hand. “No peeking, handsome.”  
“Spoilers…”, he mutters. “Singing Towers of Derilium”, he says to Raj. “Good place for a wedding as any…”, he winks at him. “Now, I’ll be off, and leave you two studious love birds to it…”  
He opens the TARDIS doors.  
“I’ll be seeing you”, he turns to River, and smiles at her. “And remember… Timelines moving in opposite directions… Not a word about your past.”  
She nods her understanding.  
He doesn’t say goodbye. He can’t. He owes her one more adventure.

* * *

 

River wades through the mud, rain pouring down over her head. When she started her Archeology degree nine months ago, getting caught in the middle of a bloody war while on an excavation in Greece had most certainly not been in her plans. Yet, here she is, with a civil war raging, and she is running as if her life depends on it-which it most certainly does.  
Panting as she is to get as far as humanely possible from the shooting, she notices a little too late a ridiculously skinny man in a brown pinstripe suit jump from behind a tree. She nearly screams in fright.  
He offers her his hand, and with a fierce expression fixed on his face, speaks.  
“Run.”  
She doesn’t know why, but she trusts this man. So she runs, never letting go of his hand. No matter how slippery it gets from the rain, the mud, the perspiration, she holds on for dear life.  
They keep running, till they reach a blue, wooden box, and realisation dawns on her.  
All the myths, all the stories she’s read; they’re true.  
The man snaps his hands, and the doors swing open.  
“Come on!”, he urges her, and with superhuman effort, they run through the open doors. Only, the inside of the box is bigger than the outside.  
They finally stop, and for a moment, they double over, in an attempt to catch their breath. The man recovers quickly, so he loses no time in snapping his fingers once more to close the doors, and walking to the centre of the room, where an illuminated column is whirring gently.  
“It’s the… It’s the TARDIS!”, she breathes in wonder, hardly believing her own senses. “I’m in the TARDIS!”  
The Doctor stops running around the column, and stares at her.  
“Hey! How do you know about the TARDIS?”  
“I’ve read all about it-you are the Doctor! Oh, God! You are the Doctor! Where’s Donna?”, she demands. “Or haven’t you met her yet?”, she asks sheepishly as she realises her blunder.  
“Nah, just visiting her family… But you need to be careful with the timelines, time travel is tricky business. Wait, what d’you mean, you’re read all about it?”  
“I had this book when I was a kid, about you and Donna. Made me wanna be an archeologist, to be honest.”  
“Oh, isn’t that nice?”, he says with a stupid grin. “Tell you what, River… Why don’t you help me drive the TARDIS?”  
Her face lights up at the prospect, and she is by his side in an instant. She follows his instructions to the letter, and carefully memorises what each button and lever controls. Way too soon for River’s tastes, the whooshing of the landing stops.  
“Where are we?”, she asks.  
“Home sweet home”, he says smiling.  
She rushes to the door, and almost opens it, when she remembers. She snaps her fingers, and the doors swing open on their own. She steps out, and finds herself in her student hall room. A broad smile adorns her face as she turns to the Doctor.  
“Thank you…”, she says.  
“Nah, it was nothing… Oh, and River? Don’t let me peek…”

* * *

 

he Doctor sneaks into the living room, careful not to make a sound. He creeps up to the extravagantly decorated Christmas Tree next to the fireplace, under which he finds a load of Christmas presents clearly intended for a little boy of about five. And next to it, a load of presents for a girl of about ten. He smiles. He kneels down, and next to all the presies from parents, grandparents, and half-forgotten maiden aunts, the Doctor deposits a red leather bound book, with golden letters reading ‘Tales of the DoctorDonna: Legend Throughout the Universe’, wrapped with a simple, TARDIS blue ribbon.  
Happy with his work, he sneaks back out of the room, completely oblivious to the silent surprise of Jane and Rupert Song the following morning, when they realise their daughter River has an extra present that they could not recall placing under the Christmas tree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, who would've thought?! One chapter to go... I can't believe that we're done already...


	24. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here goes. Epilogue.

He nervously paces up and down the pavement in front of the TARDIS. He tries to sneak a look through the windows, but as he’s realised the million times he’s already tried this, the curtains are closed. 24 hours, she said… He’s never been gladder to have a time machine, so that he can jump forward to the good bit, and escape all the inevitable boredom that comes with the linear progression of time.  
What even the Doctor cannot predict though, and is his current cause for distress, is the inexplicable knack of humans to run late. _Well… Time Ladies now, if you want to be accurate…_  
But finally, the front door swings open, and out comes Donna, followed by her grandfather and mother. He beams at them genuinely, and he notices that tears are shining in Wilf’s eyes. Sylvia stands by the door, and simply waves and nods at him. _Oh, well. We can’t have everything…_ , he thinks, as he waves and nods back.  
Wilf’s happiness and gratitude more than make up for Sylvia’s coldness. It is a few minutes before he lets the Doctor and Donna step into the TARDIS to take off. But once he does, he holds back the Doctor for a word.  
“Thank you, Doctor… You made her what she is. You made her brilliant.”  
“Oh, no. No. She was always magnificent. I just showed it to the stars.”  
A single tear escapes the corner of Wilf’s eyes.  
“None of this wiping minds business ever again, you hear me? You take good care of my little girl, Doctor, or there’ll be hell to pay.”  
The Doctor knows that the entirety of space and time will not be enough to hide him from the menace of Wilfred Mott should anything happen to Donna. Good thing he will never, ever let anything bad happen to her ever again.  
Free at last, he steps into the TARDIS, and finds Donna slowly circling the console. The unbelievable joy he feels in his hearts is overwhelming. There’s only one thing to it. He steps up to her, takes her face into his hands, and kisses her. And as the kiss deepens, making them giddy, quickening their heartbeats, giving them just a glimpse of what will follow, they let it. They hold back no longer. It is with great effort that they break apart. They need a moment to catch their breath, to calm down and think properly. His forehead finds hers, and they rest there for a moment.  
“So, Time Lord DNA… Did you tell them?”, he asks.  
“No… Too much information.”  
“Quite right, too.”  
“So, I’ve been meaning to ask… Any chance that strenuous physical exercise meant for two of the, ah, intimate variety might enhance the process?”, she asks oh so innocently.  
The Doctor is taken aback. But he recovers quickly, ignoring the blood suddenly racing through his veins.  
“Could be, could be… Always worth a try, I find…”  
“Mmm, glad to hear it…”  
“Might take more than once, mind you…”  
“Oh, no, I understand… Statistical errors, and all that.”  
“Yes… In fact, I think I’d like to try that as often as possible…”  
“Play your cards right, Spaceman, and you could.”  
They finally disentangle. Matching grins appear on their faces, flushed with happiness as they are. He moves to the console, putting in coordinates. He chooses somewhere magnificent.  
“I am glad, Donna Noble”, he says, a broad, sincere smile on his face, “gladder than you will ever know, to have this second chance with you.”  
She smiles. Her eyes are filled with tears. He doesn’t miss the pink embarrassment in her cheeks.  
“Onwards then?”, she asks shyly.  
He’s confessed his deep, unfathomable love for her, that has woven their two lives together inseparably through the entirety of time and space, he’s proven to her time and again that she’s brilliant, absolutely, radiantly brilliant, and still, she doesn’t believe she deserves all this. He loves her just a little more for it, if that is even possible. No matter. He will show her. Not a day will pass where he doesn’t make her see herself as truly magnificent as she is.  
He pulls the lever. She turns her gaze to the TARDIS’ column, a radiant, happy smile slowly appearing on her face as the whooshing sound of take-off fills the room.  
“Onwards!”, he shouts with savage joy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe this is it!
> 
> First of all, I'd like to thank all of you for reading and for sticking with this fic! I hope you enjoyed it and that it fixed that gaping hole that Journey's End burned into our hearts forever.
> 
> Then there's my friends, Marge and Kalliope, who've read, offered invalueable advice and encouraged me for the entire year it took me to write this.
> 
> Lots of love!


End file.
